












































' 






















































ENGLISH TRAITS 



u 



ENGLISH TRAITS. 



BY 






BOSTON: 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS 

M T>CCC LX. 



£S4> 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, 

h£ FHILLOPS, SAMPSON AND COMPACT, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court oi Massachusetts 



By Transfer 
Dept. of State 
NOV 1 9 1936 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
First Visit to England 9 

CHAPTER II. 
Voyage to England, 31 

CHAPTER III. 
Land, 40 

CHAPTER IV. 
Race, 50 

CHAPTER V. 
Ability, ••••.79 

CHAPTER VI. 

Mannebs, 106 

1* (5) 



6 CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VII. 
Truth, 119 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Character, ISO 

CHAPTER IX. 
Cockayne, 146 

CHAPTER X. 
Wealth, 156 

CHAPTER XI. 
Aristocracy, 174 

CHAPTER XII. 
Universities, 200 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Religion, 215 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Literature, 232 

CHAPTER XV. 
The "Times," 260 



CONTENTS. 7 



CHAPTER XVI. 
Stonehenoe 272 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Personal, 290 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Result, 296 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Speech at Manchester, 307 



ENGLISH TRAITS. 



CHAPTER I. 

FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 

I have been twice in England. In 1833, on 
my return from a short tour in Sicily, Italy, and 
France, I crossed from Boulogne, and landed in 
London at the Tower stairs. It was a dark Sun- 
day morning ; there were few people in the streets ; 
and I remember the pleasure of that first walk on 
English ground, with my companion, an American 
artist, from the Tower up through Cheapside and 
the Strand, to a house in Russell Square, whither 
we had been recommended to good chambers. For 
the first time for many months we were forced to 
check the saucy habit of travellers' criticism, as we 
could no longer speak aloud in the streets without 
being understood. The shop-signs spoke our lan- 
guage ; our country names were on the door-plates ; 

(9) 



10 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

and the public and private buildings wore a more 
native and wonted front. 

Like most young men at that time, I was much 
indebted to the men of Edinburgh, and of the 
Edinburgh Review, — to Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Hal- 
lam, and to Scott, Playfair, and De Quincey ; and 
my narrow and desultory reading had inspired the 
wish to see the faces of three or four writers,— 
Coleridge, "Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, and 
the latest and strongest contributor to the critical 
journals, Carlyle ; and I suppose if I had sifted 
the reasons that led me to Europe, when I was ill 
and was advised to travel, it was mainly the attrac- 
tion of these persons. If Goethe had been still 
living, I might have wandered into Germany also. 
Besides those I have named, (for Scott was dead,) 
there was not in Britain the man living whom 
I cared to behold, unless it were the Duke of 
"Wellington, whom I afterwards saw at "Westmin- 
ster Abbey, at the funeral of Wilberforce. The 
young scholar fancies it happiness enough to live 
with people who can give an inside to the world ; 
without reflecting that they are prisoners, too, of 
their own thought, and cannot apply themselves to 
yours. The conditions of literary success are al- 
most destructive of the best~ social power, as they 
do not leave that frolic liberty which only can 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 11 

encounter a companion on the best terms. It is 
probable you left some obscure comrade at a 
tavern, or in the farms, with right mother-wit, 
and equality to life, when you crossed sea and land 
to play bo-peep with celebrated scribes. I have, 
however, found writers superior to their books, 
and I cling to my first belief, that a strong head 
will dispose fast enough of these impediments, and 
give one the satisfaction of reality, the sense of 
having been met, and a larger horizon. 

On looking over the diary of my journey in 
1833, I find nothing to publish in my memoran- 
da of visits to places. But I have copied the 
few notes I made of visits to persons, as they re- 
spect parties quite too good and too transparent to 
the whole world to make it needful to affect any 
prudery of suppression about a few hints of those 
bright personalities. 

At Florence, chief among artists I found Ho- 
ratio Greenough, the American sculptor. His face 
was so handsome, and his person so well formed, 
that he might be pardoned, if, as was alleged, the 
face of his Medora, and the figure of a colossal 
Achilles in clay, were idealizations of his own. 
Greenough was a superior man, ardent and elo- 
quent, and all his opinions had elevation and 
magnanimity. He believed that the Greeks had 



12 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

wrought in schools or fraternities, — the genius of 
the master imparting his design to his friends, and 
inflaming them with it, and when his strength 
was spent, a new hand, with equal heat, continued 
the work ; and so by relays, until it was finished 
in every part with equal fire. This was necessary 
in so refractory a material as stone ; and he thought 
art would never prosper until we left our shy jeal- 
ous ways, and worked in society as they. All his 
thoughts breathed the same generosity. He was 
an accurate and a deep man. He was a votary of 
the Greeks, and impatierft of Gothic art. His pa- 
per on Architecture, published in 1843, announced 
in advance the leading thoughts of Mr. Ruskin on 
the morality in architecture, notwithstanding the 
antagonism in their views of the history of art. 
I have a private letter from him, — later, but re- 
specting the same period, — in which he roughly 
sketches his own theory. " Here is my theory of 
structure : A scientific arrangement of spaces and 
forms to functions and to site ; an emphasis of fea- 
tures proportioned to their gradated importance in 
function ; color and ornament to be decided and ar- 
ranged and varied by strictly organic laws, having 
a distinct reason for each decision ; the entire and 
immediate banishment of all make-shift and make- 
believe." 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 13 

Greenough brought me, through a common, 
friend, an invitation from Mr. Landor, who lived 
at San Domenica di Fiesole. On the 15th May 
I dined with Mr. Landor. I found him noble 
and courteous, living in a cloud of pictures at his 
Villa Gherardesca, a fine house commanding a 
beautiful landscape. I had inferred from his 
books, or magnified from some anecdotes, an im- 
pression of Achillean wrath, — an untamable petu- 
lance. I do not know whether the imputation 
were just or not, but certainly on this May day 
his courtesy veiled that haughty mind, and he was 
the most patient and gentle of hosts. He praised 
the beautiful cyclamen which grows all about 
Florence ; he admired Washington ; talked of 
"Wordsworth, Byron, Massinger, Beaumont and 
Fletcher. To be sure, he is decided in his 
opinions, likes to surprise, and is well content to 
impress, if possible, his English whim upon the 
immutable past. No great man ever had a great 
son, if Philip and Alexander be not an exception ; 
and Philip he calls the greater man. In art, he 
loves the Greeks, and in sculpture, them only. 
He prefers the Venus to every thing else, and, 
after that, the head of Alexander, in the gallery 
here. He prefers John of Bologna to Michael 
Angelo ; in painting, Raffaelle ; and shares the 



14 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

growing taste for Perugino and the early masters. 
The Greek histories he thought the only good ; 
and after them, Voltaire's. I could not make him 
praise Mackintosh, nor my more recent friends 
Montaigne very cordially, — and Charron also, 
which seemed undiscriminating. He thought 
Degerando indebted to " Lucas on Happiness " 
and " Lucas on Holiness " ! He pestered me 
with Southey ; but who is Southey ? 

He invited me to breakfast on Friday. On 
Friday I did not fail to go, and this time with 
Greenough. He entertained us at once with re- 
citing half a dozen hexameter lines of Julius 
Caesar's ! — from Donatus, he said. He glorified 
Lord Chesterfield more than was necessary, and 
undervalued Burke, and undervalued Socrates ; 
designated as three of the greatest of men, Wash- 
ington, Phocion, and Timoleon; much as our 
pomologists, in their lists, select the three or the 
six best pears " for a small orchard ; " and did not 
even omit to remark the similar termination of 
their names. " A great man," he said, " should 
make great sacrifices, and kill his hundred oxen, 
without knowing whether they would be con- 
sumed by gods and heroes, or whether the flies 
would eat them." I had visited Professor 
Amici, who had shown me his microscopes, 
magnifying (it was said) two thousand di- 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 15 

ameters ; and I spoke of the uses to which they 
were applied. Landor despised entomology, yet, 
in the same breath, said, " the sublime was in a 
grain of dust." I suppose I teased him about 
recent writers, but he professed never to have 
heard of Herschel, not even by name. One room 
was full of pictures, which he likes to show, es- 
pecially one piece, standing before which, he said 
ts he would give fifty guineas to the man that 
would swear it was a Domenichino." I was more 

curious to see his library, but Mr. H , one of 

the guests, told me that Mr. Landor gives away 
his books, and has never more than a dozen at a 
time in his house. 

Mr. Landor carries to its height the love of 
freak which the English delight to indulge, as if 
to signalize their commanding freedom. He has 
a wonderful brain, despotic, violent, and inex- 
haustible, meant for a soldier, by what chance 
converted to letters, in which there is not a style 
nor a tint not known to him, yet with an English 
appetite for action and heroes. The thing done 
avails, and not what is said about it. An original 
sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all 
the censures. Landor is strangely undervalued in 
England ; usually ignored ; and sometimes savage- 
ly attacked in the Reviews. The criticism may 



16 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

be right, or wrong, and is quickly forgotten ; but 
year after year the scholar must still go back to 
Landor for a multitude of elegant sentences — for 
wisdom, wit, and indignation that are unforgetable. 



From London, on the 5th August, I went to High- 
gate, and wrote a note to Mr. Coleridge, requesting 
leave to pay my respects to him. It was near noon. 
Mr. Coleridge sent a verbid message, that he was in 
bed, but if I would call after one o'clock, he would 
see me. I returned at one, and he appeared, a 
short, thick old man, with bright blue eyes and 
fine clear complexion, leaning on his cane. He 
took snuff freely, which presently soiled his cravat 
and neat black suit. He asked whether I knew 
Allston, and spoke warmly of his merits and do- 
ings when he knew him in Rome ; what a master 
of the Titianesque he was, &c, &c. He spoke of 
Dr. Channing. It was an unspeakable misfortune 
that he should have turned out a Unitarian after 
all. On this, he burst into a declamation on the 
folly and ignorance of Unitarianism, — its high un- 
reasonableness ; and taking up Bishop Waterland'a 
book, which lay on the table, he read with vehe- 
mence two or three pages written by himself in 
the fly-leaves, — passages, too, which, I believe, are 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 17 

printed in the " Aids to Reflection." When he 
stopped to take breath, I interposed, that, " whilst 
I highly valued all his explanations, I was bound 
to tell him that I was born and bred a Unitarian." 
" Yes," he said, " I supposed so ; " and continued 
as before. ' It was a wonder, that after so many 
' ages of unquestioning acquiescence in the doc- 
1 trine of St. Paul, — the doctrine of the Trinity, 
' which was also, according to Philo Judaeus, the 

* doctrine of the Jews before Christ, — this handful 
6 of Priestleians should take on themselves to deny 
' it, &c, &c. He was very sorry that Dr. Chan- 
* ning, — a man to whom he looked up, — no, to 
e say that he looked up to him would be to speak 

* falsely ; but a man whom he looked at with so much 
e interest, — should embrace such views. When he 
' saw Dr. Channing, he had hinted to him that he 
' was afraid he loved Christianity for what was lovely 

* and excellent, — he loved the good in it, and not 

* the true ; and I tell you, sir, that 1 have known 
'ten persons who loved the good, for one person 
' who loved the true ; but it is a far greater virtue 
' to love the true for itself alone, than to love the 
c good for itself alone. He (Coleridge) knew all 
f about Unitarianism perfectly well, because he had 

* once been a Unitarian, and knew what quackery 
i it was. He had been called " the rising star of 

2* 



18 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

' Unitarianism." ' He went on denning, or rather 
refining : ' The Trinitarian doctrine was realism ; 
'the idea of God was not essential, but super- 
' essential ; ' talked of trinism and tetrakism, and 
much more, of which I only caught this, 'that 
' the will was that by which a person is a person ; 
'because, if one should push me in the street, 
* and so I should force the man next me into the 
' kennel, I should at once exclaim, " I did not do 
' it, sir," meaning it was not my will.- And this 
also, ' that if you should insist on your faith here 
' in England, and I on mine, mine would be the 
' hotter side of the fagot.' 

I took advantage of a pause to say, that he had 
many readers of all religious opinions in America, 
and I proceeded to inquire if the " extract " from 
the Independent's pamphlet, in the third volume 
of the Friend, were a veritable quotation. He re- 
plied, that it was really taken from a pamphlet in 
his possession, entitled "A Protest of one of the 
Independents," or something to that effect. I told 
him how excellent I thought it, and how much I 
wished to see the entire work. " Yes," he said, 
" the man was a chaos of truths, but lacked the 
knowledge that God was a God of order. Yet the 
passage would no doubt strike you more in the 
quotation than in the original, for I have filtered it." 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 1& 

"When I rose to go, he said, " I do not know 
whether you care about poetry, but I will repeat 
some verses I lately made on my baptismal anniver- 
sary," and he recited with strong emphasis, stand- 
ing, ten or twelve lines, beginning, 

" Born unto God in Christ " 

He inquired where I had been travelling ; and 
on learning that I had been in Malta and Sicily, 
he compared one island with the other, ' repeating 
' what he had said to the Bishop of London when 
' he returned from that country, that Sicily was an 
' excellent school of political economy ; for, in any 
' town there, it only needed to ask what the govern- 
c ment enacted, and reverse that to know what ought 
■ to be done ; it was the most felicitously opposite 

* legislation to any thing good and wise. There 
' were only three things which the government had 

* brought into that garden of delights, namely, itch, 
' pox, and famine. Whereas, in Malta, the force of 
f law and mind was seen, in making that barren rock 
s of semi-Saracen inhabitants the seat of population 

* and plenty.' Going out, he showed me in the next 
apartment a picture of Allston's, and told me ' that 

* Montague, a picture-dealer, once came to see him, 
' and, glancing towards this, said, " "Well, you have 

* got a picture ! " thinking it the work of an old 



20 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

' master ; afterwards, Montague, still talking with 
' his back to the canvas, put up his hand and 
' touched it, and exclaimed, f( By Heaven ! this 
6 picture is not ten years old : " — so delicate and 
' skilful was that man's touch.' 

I was in his company for about an hour, but 
find it impossible to recall the largest part of his 
discourse, which was often like so many printed 
paragraphs in his book, — perhaps the same, — so 
readily did he fall into certain commonplaces. As 
I might have foreseen, the visit was rather a spec- 
tacle than a conversation, of no use beyond the 
satisfaction of my curiosity. He was old and pre- 
occupied, and could not bend to a new companion 
and think with him. 



From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On 
my return, I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and 
being intent on delivering a letter which I had 
brought from Rome, inquired for Craigenputtock. 
It was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dun- 
score, sixteen miles distant. No public coach 
passed near it, so I took a private carriage from 
the inn. I found the house amid desolate heathery 
hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty 
heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an au- 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 21 

thor who did not need to hide from his readers, and 
as absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled 
on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own terms 
what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, 
with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his 
extraordinary powers of conversation in easy com- 
mand ; clinging to his northern accent with evident 
relish ; full of lively anecdote, and with a stream- 
ing humor, which floated every thing he looked 
upon. His talk playfully exalting the familial 
objects, put the companion at once into an acquaint- 
ance with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very 
pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a pretty 
mythology. Few were the objects and lonely the 
man, "not a person to speak to within sixteen 
miles except the minister of Dunscore ; " so that 
books inevitably made his topics. 

He had names of his own for all the matters 
familiar to his discourse. " Blackwood's " was the 
" sand magazine ; " " Fraser's " nearer approach to 
possibility of life was the " mud magazine ; " a 
piece of road near by that marked some failed en- 
terprise was the "grave of the last sixpence." 
"When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, 
he professed hugely to admire the talent shown by 
his pig. He had spent much time and contrivance 
in confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his 



22 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had 
found out how to let a board down, and had foiled 
him. For all that, he still thought man the most 
plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked 
Nero's death, iC Qualis artifex pereo ! " better than 
most history. He worships a man that will mani- 
fest any truth to him. At one time he had in- 
quired and read a good deal about America. Lan- 
dor's principle was mere rebellion, and that he 
feared was the American principle. The best thing 
he knew of that country was, that in it a man can 
have meat for his labor. He had read in Stewart's 
book, that when he inquired in a New York hotel 
for the Boots, he had been shown across the street 
and had found Mungo in his own house dining 
on roast turkey. 

We talked of books. Plato he does not read, 
and he disparaged Socrates ; and, when pressed, 
persisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he 
called the splendid bridge from the old world to 
the new. His own reading had been multifarious. 
Tristram Shandy was one of his first books after 
Robinson Crusoe, and Robertson's America an 
early favorite. Rousseau's Confessions had dis- 
covered to him that he was not a dunce ; and it 
was now ten years since he had learned German, 
by the advice of a man who told him he would 
find in that language what he wanted. 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 23 

He took despairing or satirical views of litera- 
ture at this moment ; recounted the incredible 
sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for 
puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is 
trusted now, no books are bought, and the book- 
sellers are on the eve of bankruptcy. 

He still returned to English pauperism, the 
crowded country, the selfish abdication by public 
men of all that public persons should perform. 
' Government should direct poor men what to do. 

* Poor Irish folk come wandering over these moors. 
' My dame makes it a rule to give to every son of 
' Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the 
'next house. But here are thousands of acres 
1 which might give them all meat, and nobody to 

* bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. 

* They burned the stacks, and so found a way to 
' force the rich people to attend to them.' 

We went out to walk over long hills, and looked 
at CrifFel, then without his cap, and down into 
Wordsworth's country. There we sat down, and 
talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not 
Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he 
had the natural disinclination of every nimble 
spirit to bruise itself against walls, and did not 
like to place himself where no step can be taken. 
But he was honest and true, and cognizant of the 



24 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how 
every event affects all the future. ' Christ died 
' on the tree : that built Dunscore kirk yonder : that 
• brought you and me together. Time has only a 
1 relative existence.' 

He was already turning his eyes towards Lon- 
don with a scholar's appreciation. London is the 
heart of the world, he said, wonderful only from 
the mass of human beings. He liked the huge 
machine. Each keeps its own round. The ba- 
ker's boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed 
hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows 
or wishes to know on the subject. But it turned 
out good men. He named certain individuals, 
especially one man of letters, his friend, the best 
mind he knew, whom London had well served. 



On the 28th August, I went to Rydal Mount, 
to pay my respects to Mr. Wordsworth. His 
daughters called in their father, a plain, elderly, 
white-haired man, not prepossessing, and disfigured 
by green goggles. He sat down, and talked with 
great simplicity. He had just returned from a 
journey. His health was good, but he had broken 
a tooth by a fall, when walking with two lawyers, 
and had said, that he was glad it did not happen 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 25 

forty years ago ; whereupon they had praised his 
philosophy. 

He had much to say of America, the more that 
it gave occasion for his favorite topic, — that society 
is being enlightened by a superficial tuition, out 
of all proportion to its being restrained by moral 
culture. Schools do no good. Tuition is not 
education. He thinks more of the education of 
circumstances than of tuition. 'Tis not question 
whether there are offences of which the law takes 
cognizance, but whether there are offences of 
which the law does not take cognizance. Sin is 
what he fears, and how society is to escape with- 
out gravest mischiefs from this source — ? He 
has even said, what seemed a paradox, that they 
needed a civil war in America, to teach the ne- 
cessity of knitting the social ties stronger. ( There 
f may be,' he said, ' in America some vulgarity in 
( manner, but that's not important. That comes of 
' the pioneer state of things. But I fear they are 
' too much given to the making of money ; and sec- 
' ondly, to politics ; that they make political distinc- 
' tion the end, and not the means. And I fear they 
' lack a class of men of leisure, — in short, of gen- 
6 tlemen, — to give a tone of honor to the commu- 
( nity. I am told that things are boasted of in the 
' second class of society there, which, in England, 

a 



26 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

* — God knows, are done in England every day, — < 
■ but would never be spoken of. In America I wish 
' to know not how many churches or schools, but 
' what newspapers ? My friend, Colonel Hamilton, 
' at the foot of the hill, who was a year in America, 
f assures me that the newspapers are atrocious, and 

* accuse members of Congress of stealing spoons ! ' 
He was against taking off the tax on newspapers 
in England, which the reformers represent as a tax 
upon knowledge, for this reason, that they would 
be inundated with base prints. He said, he talked 
on political aspects, for he wished to impress on 
me and all good Americans to cultivate the moral, 
the conservative, &c, &c, and never to call into 
action the physical strength of the people, as had 
just now been done in England in the Reform 
Bill, — a thing prophesied by Delolme. He alluded 
once or twice to his conversation with Dr. Chan- 
ning, who had recently visited him, (laying his 
hand on a particular chair in which the Doctor had 
sat.) 

The conversation turned on books. Lucretius 
he esteems a far higher poet than Virgil : not in 
his system, which is nothing, but in his power of 
illustration. Faith is necessary to explain any 
thing, and to reconcile the foreknowledge of God 
with human evil. Of Cousin, (whose lectures we 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 27 

had all been reading in Boston,) he knew only 
the name. 

I inquired if he had read Carlyle's critical artif 
cles and translations. He said, he thought him 
sometimes insane. He proceeded to abuse Goethe's 
"Wilhelm Meister heartily. It was full of all man- 
ner of fornication. It was like the crossing of flies 
in the air. He had never gone farther than the 
first part ; so disgusted was he that he threw the 
book across the room. I deprecated this wrath, 
and said what I could for the better parts of the 
book ; and he courteously promised to look at it 
again. Carlyle, he said, wrote most obscurely. 
He was clever and deep, but he defied the sympa- 
thies of every body. Even Mr. Coleridge wrote 
more clearly, though he had always wished Cole- 
ridge would write more to be understood. He led 
me out into his garden, and showed me the gravel 
walk in which thousands of his lines were com- 
posed. His eyes are much inflamed. This is no 
loss, except for reading, because he never writes 
prose, and of poetry he carries even hundreds of 
lines in his head before writing them. He had 
just returned from a visit to Staffa, and within 
three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's 
Cave, and was composing a fourth, when he was 
called in to see me. He said, " If you are inter- 



28 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

ested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear 
these lines." I gladly assented ; and he recollected 
himself for a few moments, and then stood forth 
and repeated, one after the other, the three entire 
sonnets with great animation. I fancied the second 
and third more beautiful than his poems are wont 
to be. The third is addressed to the flowers, which, 
he said, especially the oxeye daisy, are very abun- 
dant on the top of the rock. The second alludes 
to the name of the cave, which is " Cave of Mu- 
sic ; " the first to the circumstance of its being 
visited by the promiscuous company of the steam- 
boat. 

This recitation was so unlooked for and sur- 
prising, — he, the old Wordsworth, standing apart, 
and reciting to me in a garden-walk, like a school- 
boy declaiming, — that I at first was near to 
laugh; but recollecting myself, that I had come 
thus far to see a poet, and he was chanting poems 
to me, I saw that he was right and I was wrong, 
and gladly gave myself up to hear. I told him 
how much the few printed extracts had quickened 
the desire to possess his unpublished poems. He 
replied, he never was in haste to publish ; partly, 
because he corrected a good deal, and every alter- 
ation is ungraciously received after printing ; but 
what he had written would be printed, whether he 



FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 2S 

lived or died. I said, " Tintern Abbey " appeared 
to be the favorite poem with the public, but more 
contemplative readers preferred the first books 
of the " Excursion," and the Sonnets. He said, 
" Yes, they are better." He preferred such of his 
poems as touched the affections, to any others ; for 
whatever is didactic, — what theories of society, and 
so on, — might perish quickly; but whatever com- 
bined a truth with an affection was xttjuxcc sg asi, 
good to-day and good forever. He cited the son- 
net " On the feelings of a high-minded Spaniard," 
which he preferred to any other, (I so understood 
him,) and the " Two Voices ; " and quoted, with 
evident* pleasure, the verses addressed " To the 
Skylark." In this connection, he said of the 
Newtonian theory, that it might yet be superseded 
and forgotten ; and Dalton's atomic theory. 

When I prepared to depart, he said he wished 
to show me what a common person in England 
could do, and he led me into the enclosure of his 
clerk, a young man, to whom he had given this 
slip of ground, which was laid out, or its natural 
capabilities shown, with much taste. He then said 
he would show me a better way towards the inn ; 
and he walked a good part of a mile, talking, and 
ever and anon stopping short to impress the word 



30 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

or the verse, and finally parted from me with great 
kindness, and returned across the fields. 

Wordsworth honored himself by his simple ad- 
herence to truth, and was very willing not to shine ; 
but he surprised by the hard limits of his thought. 
To judge from a single conversation, he made the 
impression of a narrow and very English mind ; 
of one who paid for his rare elevation by general 
tameness and conformity. Off his own beat, his 
opinions were of no value. It is not very rare to 
find persons loving sympathy and ease, who expi- 
ate their departure from the common, in one direc- 
tion, by their conformity in every other. 



CHAPTER II. 

VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 

The occasion of my second visit to England 
Was an invitation from some Mechanics' Institutes 
in Lancashire and Yorkshire, which separately 
are organized much in the same way as our New 
England Lyceums, but, in 1847, had been linked 
into a " Union," which embraced twenty or thirty 
towns and cities, and presently extended into the 
middle counties, and northward into Scotland. 
I was invited, on liberal terms, to read a series of 
lectures in them all. The request was urged with 
every kind suggestion, and every assurance of aid 
and comfort, by friendliest parties in Manchester, 
who, in the sequel, amply redeemed their word. 
The remuneration was equivalent to the fees at that 
time paid in this country for the like services. At 
all events, it was sufficient to cover any travelling 
expenses, and the proposal offered an excellent op- 
portunity of seeing the interior of England and 

(31) 



OZ ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Scotland, by means of a home, and a committee of 
intelligent friends, awaiting me in every town. 

I did not go very willingly. I am not a good 
traveller, nor have I found that long journeys yield 
a fair share of reasonable hours. But the invita- 
tion was repeated and pressed at a moment of more 
leisure, and when I was a little spent by some un- 
usual studies. I wanted a change and a tonic, and 
England was proposed to me. Besides, there were, 
at least, the dread attraction and salutary influences 
of the sea. So I took my berth in the packet-ship 
"Washington Irving, and sailed from Boston on 
Tuesday, 5th October, 1847. 

On Friday at noon, we had only made one hun- 
dred and thirty-four miles. A nimble Indian 
would have swum as far ; but the captain affirmed 
that the ship would show us in time all her paces, 
and we crept along through the floating drift of 
boards, logs, and chips, which the rivers of Maine 
and New Brunswick pour into the sea after a freshet. 

At last, on Sunday night, after doing one day's 
work in four, the storm came, the winds blew, and 
we flew before a north-wester, which strained every 
rope and sail. The good ship darts through the 
water all day, all night, like a fish, quivering with 
speed, gliding through liquid leagues, sliding from 
horizon to horizon. She has passed Cape Sable ; 



VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 83 

she has reached the Banks ; the land-birds are 
left ; gulls, haglets, ducks, petrels, swim, dive, and 
hover around ; no fishermen ; she has passed the 
Banks , left five sail behind her, far on the edge of 
the west at sundown, which were far east of us at 
morn, — though they say at sea a stern chase is a 
long race, — and still we fly for our lives. The 
shortest sea-line from Boston to Liverpool ia 
2850 miles. This a steamer keeps, and saves 
150 miles. A sailing ship can never go in a 
shorter line than 3000, and usually it is much 
longer. Our good master keeps his kites up to 
the last moment, studding-sails alow and aloft, and, 
by incessant straight steering, never loses a rod of 
way. Watchfulness is the law of the ship, — 
watch on watch, for advantage and for life. Since 
the ship was built, it seems, the master never slept 
but in his day-clothes whilst on board. " There 
are many advantages," says Saadi, " in sea-voyag- 
ing, but security is not one of them." Yet in hur- 
rying over these abysses, whatever dangers we are 
running into, we are certainly running out of the 
risks of hundreds of miles every day, which have 
their own chances of squall, collision, sea-stroke, 
piracy, cold, and thunder. Hour for hour, the risk 
on a steamboat is greater ; but the speed is safety, 
or, twelve days of danger, instead of twenty-four. 



34 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Our ship was registered 750 tons, and weighed 
perhaps, with all her freight, 1500 tons. The 
mainmast, from the deck to the top-button, meas- 
ured 115 feet; the length of the deck, from 
stem to stern, 155. It is impossible not to person- 
ify a ship ; every body does, in every thing they 
say : — she behaves well ; she minds her rudder ; 
she swims like a duck ; she runs her nose into the 
water ; she looks into a port. Then that wonder- 
ful esprit du corps, by which we adopt into our 
self-love every thing we touch, makes us all cham- 
pions of her sailing qualities. 

The conscious ship hears all the praise. In one 
week she has made 1467 miles, and now, at night, 
seems to hear the steamer behind her, which left 
Boston to-day at two, has mended her speed, and is 
flying before the gray south wind eleven and a half 
knots the hour. The sea-fire shines in her wake, 
and far around wherever a wave breaks. I read the 
hour, 9h. 45', on my watch by this light. Near 
the equator, you can read small print by it ; and the 
mate describes the phosphoric insects, when taken 
up in a pail, as shaped like a Carolina potato. 

I find the sea-life an acquired taste, like that for 
tomatoes and olives. The confinement, cold, mo- 
tion, noise, and odor are not to be dispensed with. 
The floor of your room is sloped at an angle of 



VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 35 

twenty or thirty degrees, and I waked every morn- 
ing with the belief that some one was tipping up 
my berth. Nobody likes to be treated ignomin- 
iously, upset, shoved against the 'side of the house, 
rolled over, suffocated with bilge, mephitis, and 
stewing oil. We get used to these annoyances 
at last, but the dread of the sea remains longer. 
The sea is masculine, the type of active strength. 
Look, what egg-shells are drifting all over it, each 
one, like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of ter- 
ror, alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is 
rough or smooth. Is this sad-colored circle an 
eternal cemetery ? In our graveyards we scoop a 
pit, but this aggressive water opens mile-wide pits 
and chasms, and makes a mouthful of a fleet. To 
the geologist, the sea is the only firmament ; 
the land is in perpetual flux and change, now 
blown up like a tumor, now sunk in a chasm, 
and the registered observations of a few hundred 
years find it in a perpetual tilt, rising and falling. 
The sea keeps its old level ; and 'tis no wonder that 
the history of our race is so recent, if the roar of 
the ocean is silencing our traditions. A rising of 
the sea, such as has been observed, say an inch in 
a century, from east to west on the land, will bury 
all the towns, monuments, bones, and knowledge 
of mankind, steadily and insensibly. If it is capa 



86 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

ble of these great and secular mischiefs, it is quite 
as ready at private and local damage ; and of this 
no landsman seems so fearful as the seaman. Such 
discomfort and such danger as the narratives of the 
captain and mate disclose are bad enough as the 
costly fee we pay for entrance to Europe ; but the 
wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sail- 
or. And here, on the second day of our voyage, 
stepped out a little boy in his shirt-sleeves, who 
had hid himself, whilst the ship was in port, in the 
bread-closet, having no money, and wishing to go 
to England. The sailors have dressed him in 
Guernsey frock, with a knife in his belt, and he is 
climbing nimbly about after them, " likes the work 
first-rate, and, if the captain will take him, means 
now to come back again in the ship." The mate 
avers that this is the history of all sailors ; nine 
out of ten are runaway boys ; and adds, that all of 
them are sick of the sea, but stay in it out of 
pride. Jack has a life of risks, incessant abuse, 
and the worst pay. It is a little better with the 
mate, and not very much better with the captain. 
A hundred dollars a month is reckoned high pay. 
If sailors were contented, if they had not resolved 
again and again not to go to sea any more, I should 
respect them. 

Of course, the inconveniences and terrors of the 



VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 



37 



sea are not of any account to those whose minds 
are preoccupied. The water-laws, arctic frost, the 
mountain, the mine, only shatter cockneyism ; every 
noble activity makes room for itself. A great 
mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is. And the 
sea is not slow in disclosing inestimable secrets to 
a good naturalist. 

'Tis a good rule in every journey to provide 
some piece of liberal study to rescue the hours 
which bad weather, bad company, and taverns steal 
from the best economist. Classics which at home 
are drowsily read have a strange charm in a coun- 
try inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig. I 
remember that some of the happiest and most val- 
uable hours I have owed to books, passed, many 
years ago, on shipboard. The worst impediment I 
have found at sea is the want of light in the cabin. 

We found on board the usual cabin library ; 
Basil Hall, Dumas, Dickens, Bulwer, Balzac, and 
Sand were our sea-gods. Among the passengers, 
there was some variety of talent and profession ; 
we exchanged our experiences, and all learned 
something. The busiest talk with leisure and con- 
venience at sea, and sometimes a memorable fact 
turns up, which you have long had a vacant niche 
for, and seize with the joy of a collector. But, 
under the best conditions, a voyage is one of the 
4 



38 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

severest tests to try a man. A college examina- 
tion is nothing to it. Sea-days are long, — these 
lack-lustre, joyless days which whistled over us ; 
but they were few, — only fifteen, as the captain 
counted, sixteen according to me. Reckoned from 
the time when we left soundings, our speed was 
such that the captain drew the line of his course 
in red ink on his chart, for the encouragement or 
envy of future navigators. 

It has been said that the King of England would 
consult his dignity by giving audience to foreign 
ambassadors in the cabin of a man-of-war. And 
I think the white path of an Atlantic ship the right 
avenue to the palace front of this seafaring people, 
who for hundreds of years claimed the strict sov- 
ereignty of the sea, and exacted toll and the strik- 
ing sail from the ships of all other peoples. When 
their privilege was disputed by the Dutch and 
other junior marines, on the plea that you could 
never anchor on the same wave, or hold property 
in what was always flowing, the English did not 
stick to claim the channel, or bottom of all the 
main. " As if," said they, " we contended for the 
drops of the sea, and not for its situation, or the bed 
of those waters. The sea is bounded by his majes- 
ty's empire." 

As we neared the land, its genius was felt. This 



VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 39 

was inevitably the British side. In every man's 
thought arises now a new system, English senti- 
ments, English loves and fears, English history 
and social modes. Yesterday, every passenger had 
measured the speed of the ship by watching the 
bubbles over the ship's bulwarks. To-day, instead 
of bubbles, we measure by Kinsale, Cork, Water- 
ford, and Ardmore. There lay the green shore 
of Ireland, like some coast of plenty. We could 
see towns, towers, churches, harvests ; but the 
curse of eight hundred years we could not discern. 



CHAPTER III. 

LAND. 

Alfieri thought Italy and England the only 
countries worth living in ; the former, because there 
nature vindicates her rights, and triumphs over the 
evils inflicted by the governments ; the latter, be- 
cause art conquers nature, and transforms a rude, 
ungenial land into a paradise of comfort and plenty. 
England is a garden. Under an ash-colored sky, 
the fields have been combed and rolled till they 
appear to have been finished with a pencil instead 
of a plough. The solidity of the structures that 
compose the towns speaks the industry of ages. 
Nothing is left as it was made. Rivers, hills, val- 
leys, the sea itself feel the hand of a master. The 
long habitation of a powerful and ingenious race 
has turned every rood of land to its best use, has 
found all the capabilities, the arable soil, the quar- 
riable rock, the highways, the byways, the fords, 
the navigable waters ; and the new arts of inter- 
course meet you every where ; so that England ia 

(40) 



LAND. 41 

a huge phalanstery, where all that man wants is 
provided within the precinct. Cushioned and 
comforted in every manner, the traveller rides as 
on a cannon-ball, high and low, over rivers and 
towns, through mountains, in tunnels of three or 
four miles, at near twice the speed of our trains ; 
and reads quietly the Times newspaper, which, by 
its immense correspondence and reporting, seems 
to have machinized the rest of the world for his 
occasion. 

The problem of the traveller landing at Liver- 
pool is, Why England is England ? What are the 
elements of that power which the English hold 
over other nations ? If there be one test of na- 
tional genius universally accepted, it is success ; 
and if there be one successful country in the uni- 
verse for the last millennium, that country is Eng- 
land. 

A wise traveller will naturally choose to visit the 
best of actual nations ; and an American has more 
reasons than another to draw him to Britain. In 
all that is done or begun by the Americans to- 
wards right thinking or practice, we are met by a 
civilization already settled and overpowering. The 
culture of the day, the thoughts and aims of men, 
are English thoughts and aims. A nation consider- 
able for a thousand years since Egbert, it has, in the 
4* 



42 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

last centuries, obtained the ascendant, and stamped 
the knowledge, activity, and power of mankind 
with its impress. Those who resist it do not feel 
it or obey it less. The Russian in his snows is 
aiming to be English. The Turk and Chinese 
also are making awkward efforts to be English. 
The practical common-sense of modern society, 
the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, 
religion take, is the natural genius of the British 
mind. The influence of France is a constituent 
of modern civility, but not enough opposed to the 
English for the most wholesome effect. The 
American is only the continuation of the English 
genius into new conditions, more or less propitious. 

See what books fill our libraries. Every book 
we read, every biography, play, romance, in what- 
ever form, is still English history and manners. 
So that a sensible Englishman once said to me, "As 
long as you do not grant us copyright, we shall 
have the teaching of you." 

But we have the same difficulty in making a 
social or moral estimate of England, as the sheriff 
finds in drawing a jury to try some cause which 
has agitated the whole community, and on which 
every body finds himself an interested party. Of- 
ficers, jurors, judges have all taken sides. Eng- 
land has inoculated all nations with her civilization, 



LAND. 45 

intelligence, and tastes ; and, to resist the tyranny 
and prepossession of the British element, a serious 
man must aid himself, by comparing with it the 
civilizations of the farthest east and west, the old 
Greek, the Oriental, and, much more, the ideal 
standard, if only by means of the very impatience 
which English forms are sure to awaken in inde- 
pendent minds. 

Besides, if we will visit London, the present 
time is the best time, as some signs portend that it 
has reached its highest point. It is observed that 
the English interest us a little less within a few 
years ; and hence the impression that the British 
power has culminated, is in solstice, or already de- 
clining. 

As soon as you enter England, which, with "Wales, 
is no larger than the State of Georgia,* this little 
land stretches by an illusion to the dimensions of 
an empire. The innumerable details, the crowded 
succession of towns, cities, cathedrals, castles, and 
great and decorated estates, the number and power 
of the trades and guilds, the military strength and 
splendor, the multitudes of rich and of remarkable 
people, the servants and equipages, — all these 
catching the eye, and never allowing it to pause, 

* Add South Carolina, and you have more than an equivalent foi 
the area of Scotland. 



44 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

hide all boundaries, by the impression of magnifi- 
cence and endless wealth. 

I reply to all the urgencies that refer me to this 
and that object indispensably to be seen, — Yes, 
to see England well needs a hundred years ; for, 
what they told me was the merit of Sir John Soane's 
Museum, in London, — that it was well packed 
and well saved, — is the merit of England ; — it is 
stuffed full, in all corners and crevices, with towns, 
towers, churches, villas, palaces, hospitals, and 
charity-houses. In the history of art, it is a long 
way from a cromlech to York minster ; yet all the 
intermediate steps may still be traced in this all- 
preserving island. 

The territory has a singular perfection. The 
climate is warmer by many degrees than it is en- 
titled to by latitude. Neither hot nor cold, there 
is no hour in the whole year when one cannot 
work. Here is no winter, but such days as we 
have in Massachusetts in November, a temperature 
which makes no exhausting demand on human 
strength, but allows the attainment of the largest 
stature. Charles the Second said, " it invited men 
abroad more days in the year and more hours in 
the day than another country." Then England has 
all the materials of a working country except wood. 
The constant rain, — a rain with every tide, in soma 



LAND. 45 

parts of the island, — keeps its multitude of rivers 
full, and brings agricultural production up to the 
highest point. It has plenty of water, of stone, 
of potter's clay, of coal, of salt, and of iron. The 
land naturally abounds with game, immense heaths 
and downs are paved with quails, grouse, and wood- 
cock, and the shores are animated by water birds. 
The rivers and the surrounding sea spawn with 
fish ; there are salmon for the rich, and sprats and 
herrings for the poor. In the northern lochs, the 
herring are in innumerable shoals ; at one season, 
the country people say, the lakes contain one part 
water and two parts fish. 

The only drawback on this industrial conven- 
iency, is the darkness of its sky. The night and 
day are too nearly of a color. It strains the eyes 
to read and to write. Add the coal smoke. In 
the manufacturing towns, the fine soot or blacks 
darken the day, give white sheep the color of black 
sheep, discolor the human saliva, contaminate the 
air, poison many plants, and corrode the monuments 
and buildings. 

The London fog aggravates the distempers of 
the sky, and sometimes justifies the epigram on the 
climate by an English wit, " in a fine day, looking 
up a chimney ; in a foul day, looking down one." 
A gentleman in Liverpool told me that he found 



46 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

he could do without a fire in his parlor about one 
day in the year. It is however pretended, that the 
enormous consumption of coal in the island is also 
felt in modifying the general climate. 

Factitious climate, factitious position. England 
resembles a ship in its shape, and, if it were one, 
its best admiral could not have worked it, or an- 
chored it in a more judicious or effective position. 
Sir John Herschel said, " London was the centre 
of the terrene globe." The shopkeeping nation, 
to use a shop word, has a good stand. The old 
Venetians pleased themselves with the flattery, that 
Venice was in 45°, midway between the poles and 
the line ,* as if that were an imperial centrality. 
Long of old, the Greeks fancied Delphi the navel 
of the earth, in their favorite mode of fabling the 
earth to be an animal. The Jews believed Jerusa- 
lem to be the centre. I have seen a krato metric 
chart designed to show that the city of Philadel- 
phia was in the same thermic belt, and, by infer- 
ence, in the same belt of empire, as the cities of 
Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn by a 
patriotic Philadelphian, and was examined with 
pleasure, under his showing, by the inhabitants 
of Chestnut Street. But, when carried to Charles- 
ton, to New Orleans, and to Boston, it somehow 
failed to convince the ingenious scholars of all 
those capitals. 



LAND. 47 

But England is anchored at the side of Europe, 
and right in the heart of the modern world. The 
sea, which, according to Virgil's famous line, di- 
vided the poor Britons utterly from the world, 
proved to be the ring of marriage with all nations. 
It is not down in the books, — it is written only in 
the geologic strata, — that fortunate day when a 
wave of the German Ocean burst the old isthmus 
which joined Kent and Cornwall to France, and gave 
to this fragment of Europe its impregnable sea wall, 
cutting off an island of eight hundred miles in 
length, with an irregular breadth reaching to three 
hundred miles ; a territory large enough for inde- 
pendence enriched with . every seed of national 
power, so near, that it can see the harvests of the 
continent ; and so far, that who would cross the 
strait must be an expert mariner, ready for tem- 
pests. As America, Europe, and Asia lie, these 
Britons have precisely the best commercial position 
in the whole planet, and are sure of a market 
for all the goods they can manufacture. And to 
make these advantages avail, the Kiver Thames 
must dig its spacious outlet to the sea from the 
heart of the kingdom, giving road and landing to 
innumerable ships, and all the conveniency to trade, 
that a people so skilful and sufficient in economiz- 
ing water-front by docks, warehouses, and lighters 



48 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

required. "When James the First declared his 
purpose of punishing London by removing his 
Court, the Lord Mayor replied, " that, in removing 
his royal presence from his lieges, they hoped he 
would leave them the Thames." 

In the variety of surface, Britain is a miniature 
of Europe, having plain, forest, marsh, river, sea- 
shore ; mines in Cornwall ; caves in Matlock and 
Derbyshire ; delicious landscape in Dovedale, de- 
licious sea- view at Tor Bay, Highlands in Scotland, 
Snowdon in Wales ; and, in Westmoreland and 
Cumberland, a pocket Switzerland, in which the 
lakes and mountains are on a sufficient scale to fill 
the eye and touch the imagination. It is a nation 
conveniently small. Fontenelle thought, that nature 
had sometimes a little affectation ; and there is such 
an artificial completeness in this nation of artificers, 
as if there were a design from the beginning to 
elaborate a bigger Birmingham. Nature held 
counsel with herself, and said, ( My Romans are 
gone. To build my new empire, I will choose a 
rude race, all masculine, with brutish strength. I 
will not grudge a competition of the roughest 
males. Let buffalo gore buffalo, and the pasture 
to the strongest ! For I have work that requires 
the best will and sinew. Sharp and temperate 
northern breezes shall blow, to keep that will alive 



LAND. 49 

and alert. The oea shall disjoin the people from 
others, and knit them to a fierce nationality. It 
shall give them markets on every side. Long 
time I will keep them on their feet, by poverty, 
border-wars, seafaring, sea-risks, and the stimulus 
of gain. An island, — but not so large, the peo- 
ple not so many as to glut the great markets and 
depress one another, but proportioned to the size 
of Europe and the continents.' 

"With its fruits, and wares, and money, must its 
civil influence radiate. It is a singular coincidence 
to this geographic centrality, the spiritual centrali- 
ty, which Emanuel Swedenborg ascribes to the 
people. " For the English nation, the best of 
them are in the centre of all Christians, because 
they have interior intellectual light. This ap- 
pears conspicuously in the spiritual world. This 
light they derive from the liberty of speaking and 
writing, and thereby of thinking." 
5 



CHAPTER IV. 

RACE. 

An ingenious anatomist has written a book * to 
prove that races are imperishable, but nations are 
pliant political constructions, easily changed or de- 
stroyed. But this writer did not found his assumed 
races on any necessary law, disclosing their ideal or 
metaphysical necessity ; nor did he, on the other 
hand, count with precision the existing races, and 
settle the true bounds ; a point of nicety, and the 
popular test of the theory. The individuals at the 
extremes of divergence in one race of men are as 
unlike as the wolf to the lapdog. Yet each vari- 
ety shades down imperceptibly into the next, and 
you cannot draw the line where a race begins or 
ends. Hence every writer makes a different count. 
Blumenbach reckons five races ; Humboldt three ; 
and Mr. Pickering, who lately, in our Exploring 
Expedition, thinks he saw all the kinds of men that 
can be on the planet, makes eleven. 

* The Races, a Fragment. By Robert Knox. London : 1850. 

(50) 



RACE. 51 

The British Empire is reckoned to contain 222 , 
000,000 souls, — perhaps a fifth of the population 
of the globe ; and to comprise a territory of 5,000,- 
000 square miles. So far have British people pre- 
dominated. Perhaps forty of these millions are of 
British stock. Add the United States of America, 
which reckon, exclusive of slaves, 20,000,000 of 
people, on a territory of 3,000,000 square miles, 
and in which the foreign element, however consider- 
able, is rapidly assimilated, and you have a popula- 
tion of English descent and language, of 60,000,000, 
and governing a population of 245,000,000 souls. 

The British census proper reckons twenty-seven 
and a half millions in the home countries. What 
makes this census important is the quality of the 
units that compose it. They are free forcible men, 
in a country where life is safe, and has reached the 
greatest value. They give the bias to the current 
age ; and that, not by chance or by mass, but by 
their character, and by the number of individuals 
among them of personal ability. It has been de- 
nied that the English have genius. Be it as it 
may, men of vast intellect have been born on their 
soil, and they have made or applied the principal 
inventions. They have sound bodies, and supreme 
endurance in war and in labor. The spawning 
force of the race has sufficed to the colonization 



52 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

of great parts of the world ; yet it remains to be 
seen whether they can make good the exodus of 
millions from Great Britain, amounting, in 1852, 
to more than a thousand a day. They have assim- 
ilating force, since they are imitated by their foreign 
subjects ; and they are still aggressive and propa- 
gandist, enlarging the dominion of their arts and 
liberty. Their laws are hospitable, and slavery 
does not exist under them. What oppression 
exists is incidental and temporary ; their success is 
not sudden or fortunate, but they have maintained 
constancy and self-equality for many ages. 

Is this power due to their race, or to some other 
cause ? Men hear gladly of the power of blood 
or race. Every body likes to know that his advan- 
tages cannot be attributed to air, soil, sea, or to 
local wealth, as mines and quarries, nor to laws 
and traditions, nor to fortune, but to superior brain, 
as it makes the praise more personal to him. 

We anticipate in the doctrine of race something 
like that law of physiology, that, whatever bone, 
muscle, or essential organ is found in one healthy 
individual, the same part or organ may be found 
in or near the same place in its congener ; and 
we look to find in the son every mental and moral 
property that existed in the ancestor. In race, it 
is not the broad shoulders, or litheness, or stature 



RACE. 55 

that give advantage, bat a symmetry that reaches 
as far as to the wit. Then the miracle and renown 
begin. Then first we care to examine the pedigree, 
and copy needfully the training, — what food they 
ate, what nursing, school, and exercises they had, 
which resulted in this mother-wit, delicacy of 
thought, and robust wisdom. How came such 
men as King Alfred, and Roger Bacon, William 
of Wykeham, Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, 
Isaac Newton, William Shakspeare, George Chap- 
man, Francis Bacon, George Herbert, Henry Yane, 
to exist here ? What made these delicate natures ? 
was it the air ? was it the sea ? was it the parent- 
age ? For it is certain that these men are samples 
of their contemporaries. The hearing ear is always 
found close to the speaking tongue ; and no genius 
can long or often utter any thing which is not 
invited and gladly entertained by men around 
him. 

It is race, is it not? that puts the hundred mil- 
lions of India under the dominion of a remote 
island in the north of Europe. Race avails much, 
if that be true, which is alleged, that all Celts are 
Catholics, and all Saxons are Protestants ; that 
Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the repre- 
sentative principle. Race is a controlling influence 
in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every 
5* 



54 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

climate, has preserved the same character and em- 
ployments. Race in the negro is of appalling 
importance. The French in Canada, cut off from 
all intercourse with the parent people, have held 
their national traits. 1 chanced to read Tacitus 
(( on the Manners of the Germans," not long since, 
in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I found 
abundant points of resemblance between the Ger- 
mans of the Hereynian forest, and our Hoosiers, 
Suckers, and Badgers of the American woods. 

But whilst race works immortally to keep its 
own, it is resisted by other forces. Civilization is 
a re-agent, and eats away the old traits. The Arabs 
of to-day are the Arabs of Pharaoh ; but the Brit- 
on of to-day is a very different person from Cas- 
sibelaunus or Ossian. Each religious sect has its 
physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a 
face ; the Quakers, a face ; the nuns, a face. An 
Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his man- 
ners. Trades and professions carve their own lines 
on face and form. Certain circumstances of Eng- 
lish life are not less effective ; as, personal liberty ; 
plenty of food ; good ale and mutton ; open mar- 
ket, or good wages for every kind of labor ; high 
bribes to talent and skill ; the island life, or the 
million opportunities and outlets for expanding 
and misplaced talent; readiness of combination 



RACE. 55 

among themselves for politics or for business 
strikes ; and sense of superiority founded on habit 
of victory in labor and in war ; and the appetite 
for superiority grows by feeding. 

It is easy to add to the counteracting forces to 
race. Credence is a main element. 'Tis said, that 
the views of nature held by any people determine 
all their institutions. "Whatever influences add to 
mental or moral faculty, take men out of nation- 
ality, as out of other conditions, and make the 
national life a culpable compromise. 

These limitations of the formidable doctrine of 
race suggest others which threaten to undermine 
it, as not sufficiently based. The fixity or incon- 
vertibleness of races as we see them, is a weak 
argument for the eternity of these frail boundaries, 
since all our historical period is a point to the du- 
ration in which nature has wrought. Any the 
least and solitariest fact in our natural history, such 
as the melioration of fruits and of animal stocks, 
has the worth of a power in the opportunity of 
geologic periods. Moreover, though we flatter the 
self-love of men and nations by the legend of pure 
races, all our experience is of the gradation and 
resolution of races, and strange resemblances meet 
us every where. It need not puzzle us that Ma- 
lay and Papuan, Celt and Roman, Saxon and Tar- 



56 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

tar should mix, when we see the rudiments of tigei 
and baboon in our human form, and know that 
the barriers of races are not so firm, but that 
some spray sprinkles us from the antediluvian seas. 

The low organizations are simplest ; a mere 
mouth, a jelly, or a straight worm. As the scale 
mounts, the organizations become complex. We 
are piqued with pure descent, but nature loves 
inoculation. A child blends in his face the faces 
of both parents, and some feature from every an- 
cestor whose face hangs on the wall. The best 
nations are those most widely related ; and nav- 
igation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is the 
most potent advancer of nations. 

The English composite character betrays a mixed 
origin. Every thing English is a fusion of dis- 
tant and antagonistic elements. The language is 
mixed ; the names of men are of different nations, 
— three languages, three or four nations ; — the 
currents of thought are counter: contemplation and 
practical skill ; active intellect and dead conserva- 
tism ; world-wide enterprise, and devoted use and 
wont ; aggressive freedom and hospitable law, with 
bitter class-legislation ; a people scattered by their 
wars and affairs over the face of the whole earth, 
and homesick to a man ; a country of extremes, — 
dukes and chartists, Bishops of Durham and 



KACE. 



57 



naked heathen colliers ; — nothing can be praised 
in it without damning exceptions, and nothing de- 
nounced without salvos of cordial praise. 

Neither do this people appear to be of one stem ; 
but collectively a better race than any from which 
thpy are derived. Nor is it easy to trace it home 
to its original seats. Who can call by right names 
what races are in Britain ? Who can trace them 
historically ? Who can discriminate them anatom- 
ically, or metaphysically ? 

In the impossibility of arriving at satisfaction on 
the historical question of race, and, — come of 
whatever disputable ancestry, — the indisputable 
Englishman before me, himself very well marked, 
and nowhere else to be found, — I fancied I could 
leave quite aside the choice of a tribe as his lineal 
progenitors. Defoe said in his wrath, " the Eng- 
lishman was the mud of all races." I incline to 
the belief, that, as water, lime, and sand make 
mortar, so certain temperaments marry well, and, 
by well-managed contrarieties, develop as drastic 
a character as the English. On the whole, it is 
not so much a history of one or of certain tribes of 
Saxons, Jutes, or Frisians, coming from one place, 
and genetically identical, as it is an anthology of 
temperaments out of them all. Certain tempera- 
ments suit the sky and soil of England, say eight 



58 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

or ten or twenty varieties, as, out of a hundrea 
pear-trees, eight or ten suit the soil of an orchard, 
and thrive, whilst all the unadapted temperaments 
die out. 

The English derive their pedigree from such a 
range of nationalities, that there needs sea-room 
and land-room to unfold the varieties of talent and 
character. Perhaps the ocean serves as a galvanic 
battery to distribute acids at one pole, and alkalies 
at the other. So England tends to accumulate her 
liberals in America, and her conservatives at Lon- 
don. The Scandinavians in her race still hear in 
every age the murmurs of their mother, the ocean ; 
the Briton in the blood husrs the homestead still. 

Again, as if to intensate the influences that are 
not of race, what we think of when we talk of 
English traits really narrows itself to a small dis- 
trict. It excludes Ireland, and Scotland, and Wales, 
and reduces itself at last to London, that is, to 
those who come and go thither. The portraits that 
hang on the walls in the Academy Exhibition at 
London, the figures in Punch's drawings of the 
public men, or of the club-houses, the prints in 
the shop-windows, are distinctive English, and not 
American, no, nor Scotch, nor Irish : but 'tis a 
very restricted nationality. As you go north into 
the manufacturing and agricultural districts, and to 



RACE. 59 

the population that never travels, as you go into 
Yorkshire, as you enter Scotland, the world's Eng- 
lishman is no longer found. In Scotland, there is 
a rapid loss of all grandeur of mien and manners ; 
a provincial eagerness and acuteness appear; the 
poverty of the country makes itself remarked, 
and a coarseness of manners ; and, among the in- 
tellectual, is the insanity of dialectics. In Ireland, 
are the same climate and soil as in England, but less 
food, no right relation to the land, political de- 
pendence, small tenantry, and an inferior or mis- 
placed race. 

These queries concerning ancestry and blood 
may be well allowed, for there is no prosperity 
that seems more to depend on the kind of man 
than British prosperity. Only a hardy and wise 
people could have made this small territory great. 
We say, in a regatta or yacht-race, that if the boats 
are anywhere nearly matched, it is the man that 
wins. Put the best sailing master into either boat, 
and he will win. 

Yet it is fine for us to speculate in face of 
unbroken traditions, though vague, and losing them- 
selves in fable. The traditions have got footing, 
and refuse to be disturbed. The kitchen-clock is 
more convenient than sidereal time. We must 
use the popular category, as we do by the Linnaean 



60 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

classification, for convenience, and not as exact and 
final. Otherwise, we are presently confounded, 
when the best settled traits of one race are claimed 
by some new ethnologist as precisely characteristic 
of the rival tribe. 

I found plenty of well-marked English types, 
the ruddy complexion fair and plump, robust men, 
with faces cut like a die, and a strong island speech 
and accent ; a Norman type, with the complacency 
that belongs to that constitution. Others, who 
might be Americans, for any thing that appeared 
in their complexion or form : and their speech 
was much less marked, and their thought much 
less bound. We will call them Saxons. Then 
the Roman has implanted his dark complexion in 
the trinity or quaternity of bloods. 



1. The sources from which tradition derives their 
stock are mainly three. And, first, they are of 
the oldest blood of the world, — the Celtic. Some 
peoples are deciduous or transitory. Where are 
the Greeks ? where the Etrurians ? where the 
Romans ? But the Celts or Sidonides are an old 
family, of whose beginning there is no memory, 
and their end is likely to be still more remote in 
the future ; for they have endurance and produc- 



RACE. 61 

tiveness. They planted Britain, and gave to the 
seas and mountains names which are poems, and 
imitate the pure voices of nature. They are favor- 
ably remembered in the oldest records of Europe. 
They had no violent feudal tenure, but the hus- 
bandman owned the land. They had an alphabet, 
astronomy, priestly culture, and a sublime creed. 
They have a hidden and precarious genius. They 
made the best popular literature of the middle ages 
in the songs of Merlin, and the tender and deli- 
cious mythology of Arthur. 

2. The English come mainly from the Germans, 
whom the Romans found hard to conquer in two 
hundred and ten years, — say, impossible to con- 
quer, — when one remembers the long sequel ; a 
people about whom, in the old empire, the rumor 
ran, there was never any that meddled with them 
that repented it not. 

3. Charlemagne, halting one day in a town of 
Narbonnese Gaul, looked out of a window, and saw 
a fleet of Northmen cruising in the Mediterranean. 
They even entered the port of the town where he 
was, causing no small alarm and sudden manning 
and arming of his galleys. As they put out to 
sea again, the emperor gazed long after them, his 
eyes bathed in tears. " I am tormented with sor- 
row," he said, " when I foresee the evils they will 

6 



62 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

bring on my posterity." There was reason for 
these Xerxes' tears. The men who have built 
a ship and invented the rig, — cordage, sail, com- 
pass, and pump, — the working in and out of 
port, have acquired much more than a ship. 
Now arm them, and every shore is at their mercy. 
For, if they have not numerical superiority where 
thev anchor, they have only to sail a mile or two 
to find it. Bonaparte's art of war, namely of con- 
centrating force on the point of attack, must always 
be theirs who have the choice of the battle-ground. 
Of course they come into the fight from a higher 
ground of power than the land-nations ; and can 
engage them on shore with a victorious advantage 
in the retreat. As soon as the shores are sufficient- 
ly peopled to make piracy a losing business, the 
same skill and courage are ready for the service of 
trade. 

The HeimsJcringla* or Sagas of the Kings of 
Norway, collected by Snorro Sturleson, is the Iliad 
and Odyssey of English history. Its portraits, 
like Homer's, are strongly individualized. The 
Sagas describe a monarchical republic like Sparta. 
The government disappears before the importance 
of citizens. In Norway, no Persian masses fight 

* Heimskringla. Translated by Samuel Laing, Esq. London. 
1844. 



EACE. 63 

and perish to aggrandize a king, but the actors are 
bonders or landholders, every one of whom is 
named and personally and patronymically de- 
scribed, as the king's friend and companion. A 
sparse population gives this high worth to every man. 
Individuals are often noticed as very handsome per- 
sons, which trait only brings the story nearer to the 
English race. Then the solid material interest 
predominates, so dear to English understanding, 
wherein the association is logical, between merit 
and land. The heroes of the Sagas are not the 
knights of South Europe. No vaporing of France 
and Spain has corrupted them. They are substan- 
tial farmers, whom the rough times have forced to 
defend their properties. They have weapons which 
they use in a determined manner, by no means for 
chivalry, but for their acres. They are people 
considerably advanced in rural arts, living amphib- 
iously on a rough coast, and drawing half their 
food from the sea, and half from the land. They 
have herds of cows, and malt, wheat, bacon, butter, 
and cheese. They fish in the fiord, and hunt the 
deer. A king among these farmers has a varying 
power, sometimes not exceeding the authority of 
a sheriff. A king was maintained much as, in 
some of our country districts, a winter-schoolmas- 
ter is quartered, a week here, a week there, and 



64 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

a fortnight on the next farm, — on all the farm- 
ers in rotation. This the king calls going into 
guest-quarters ; and it was the only way in which, 
in a poor country, a poor king, with many retainers, 
could be kept alive, when he leaves his own farm 
to collect his dues through the kingdom. 

These Norsemen are excellent persons in the 
main, with good sense, steadiness, wise speech, and 
prompt action. But they have a singular turn for 
homicide ; their chief end of man is to murder, or 
to be murdered ; oars, scythes, harpoons, crowbars, 
peatknives, and hayforks, are tools valued by 
them all the more for their charming aptitude for 
assassinations. A pair of kings, after dinner, will 
divert themselves by thrusting each his sword 
through the other's body, as did Yngve and Alf. 
Another pair ride out on a morning for a frolic, 
and, finding no weapon near, will take the bits out 
of their horses' mouths, and crush each other's 
heads with them, as did Alric and Eric. The sight 
of a tent-cord or a cloak-string puts them on hang- 
ing somebody, a wife, or a husband, or, best of all, 
a king. If a farmer has so much as a hayfork, 
he sticks it into a King Dag. King Ingiald finds it 
vastly amusing to burn up half a dozen kings in a 
hall, after getting them drunk. Never was poor 
gentleman so surfeited with life, so furious to be 



hace. 6a 

rid of it, as the Northman. If he cannot pick 
any other quarrel, he will get himself comfortably 
gored by a bull's horns, like Egil, or slain by a 
land-slide, like the agricultural King Onund. Odin 
died in his bed, in Sweden ; but it was a proverb 
of ill condition, to die the death of old age. King 
Hake of Sweden cuts and slashes in battle, as long 
as he can stand, then orders his war-ship, loaded 
with his dead men and their weapons, to be taken 
out to sea, the tiller shipped, and the sails spread ; 
being left alone, he sets fire to some tar-wood, and 
lies down contented on deck. The wind blew off 
the land, the ship flew burning in clear flame, 
out between the islets into the ocean, and there 
was the right end of King Hake. 

The early Sagas are sanguinary and piratical ; 
the later are of a noble strain. History rarely 
yields us better passages than the conversation be- 
tween King Sigurd the Crusader, and King Eystein, 
his brother, on their respective merits, — one, the 
soldier, and the other, a lover of the arts of peace. 

But the reader of the Norman history must 
steel himself by holding fast the remote compen- 
sations which result from animal vigor. As the 
old fossil world shows that the first steps of reduc- 
ing the chaos were confided to saurians and other 
huge and horrible animals, so the foundations of 
6* 



66 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

the new civility were to be laid by the most savage 
men. 

The Normans came out of France into England 
worse men than they went into it, one hundred and 
sixty years before. They had lost their own lan- 
guage, and learned the Romance or barbarous Latin 
of the Gauls ; and had acquired, with the language, 
all the vices it had names for. The conquest has ob- 
tained in the chronicles, the name of the " memory 
of sorrow." Twenty thousand thieves landed at 
Hastings. These founders of the House of Lords 
were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy 
and ferocious pirates. They were all alike, they 
took every thing they could carry, they burned, 
harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until every 
thing English was brought to the verge of ruin. 
Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and 
wealth, that decent and dignified men now exist- 
ing boast their descent from these filthy thieves, 
who showed a far juster conviction of their own 
merits, by assuming for their types the swine, 
goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they 
severally resembled. 

England yielded to the Danes and Northmen in 
the tenth and eleventh centuries, and was the re- 
ceptacle into which all the mettle of that strenuous 
population was poured. The continued draught of 



RACE. 6? 

the best men in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, to 
these piratical expeditions, exhausted those coun- 
tries, like a tree which bears much fruit when 
young, and these have been second-rate powers 
ever since. The power of the race migrated, and 
left Norway void. King Olaf said, " When King 
Harold, my father, went westward to England, the 
chosen men in Norway followed him : but Nor- 
way was so emptied then, that such men have not 
since been to find in the country, nor especially 
such a leader as King Harold was for wisdom and 
bravery." 

It was a tardy recoil of these invasions, when, 
in 1801, the British government sent Nelson to 
bombard the Danish forts in the Sound ; and, in 
1807, Lord Cathcart, at Copenhagen, took the en- 
tire Danish fleet, as it lay in the basins, and all the 
equipments from the Arsenal, and carried them to 
England. Konghelle, the town where the kings 
of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were wont to 
meet, is now rented to a private English gentleman 
for a hunting ground. 

It took many generations to trim, and comb, and 
perfume the first boat-load of Norse pirates into 
royal highnesses and most noble Knights of the 
Garter : but every sparkle of ornament dates back 
to the Norse boat. There will be time enough to 



68 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

mellow this strength into civility and religion. It 
is a medical fact, that the children of the blind see • 
the children of felons have a healthy conscience. 
Many a mean, dastardly boy is, at the age of pu- 
berty, transformed into a serious and generous 
youth. 

The mildness of the following ages has not quite 
effaced these traits of Odin ; as the rudiment of a 
structure matured in the tiger is said to be still found 
unabsorbed in the Caucasian man. The nation has a 
tough, acrid, animal nature, which centuries of 
churching and civilizing have not been able to 
sweeten. Alfieri said, " the crimes of Italy were 
the proof of the superiority of the stock ; " and one 
may say of England, that this watch moves on a splin- 
ter of adamant. The English uncultured are a brutal 
nation. The crimes recorded in their calendars leave 
nothing to be desired in the way of cold malignity. 
Dear to the English heart is a fair stand-up fight. 
The brutality of the manners in the lower class 
appears in the boxing, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, 
love of executions, and in the readiness for a set-to 
in the streets, delightful to the English of all 
classes. The costermongers of London streets 
hold cowardice in loathing : — " we must work our 
fists well; we are all handy with our fists." The 
public schools are charged with being bear-gardens 



RACE. 69 

of brutal strength, and are liked by the people for 
that cause. The fagging is a trait of the same qual- 
ity. Medwin, in the Life of Shelley, relates, that, 
at a military school, they rolled up a young man in 
a snowball, and left him so in his room, while the 
other cadets went to church ; — and crippled him 
for life. They have retained impressment, deck- 
flogging, army-flogging, and school-flogging. Such 
is the ferocity of the army discipline, that a soldier 
sentenced to flogging, sometimes prays that his 
sentence may be commuted to death. Flogging 
banished from the armies of Western Europe, re- 
mains here by the sanction of the Duke of Wel- 
lington. The right of the husband to sell the wife 
has been retained down to our times. The Jews 
have been the favorite victims of royal and popu- 
lar persecution. Henry III. mortgaged all the 
Jews in the kingdom to his brother, the Earl of 
Cornwall, as security for money which he borrowed. 
The torture of criminals, and the rack for extort- 
ing evidence, were slowly disused. Of the crim- 
inal statutes, Sir Samuel Komilly said, " I have 
examined the codes of all nations, and ours is the 
worst, and worthy of the Anthropophagi." In 
the last session, the House of Commons was listen- 
ing to details of flogging and torture practised ia 
the jails. 



70 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

As soon as this land, thus geographically posted, 
got a hardy people into it, they could not help 
becoming the sailors and factors of the globe. 
From childhood, they dabbled in water, they swum 
like fishes, their playthings were boats. In the 
case of the ship-money, the judges delivered it for 
law, that a England being an island, the very mid- 
land shires therein are all to be accounted mari- 
time : " and Fuller adds, " the genius even of 
landlocked counties driving the natives with a 
maritime dexterity." As early as the conquest, it 
is remarked in explanation of the wealth of Eng- 
land, that its merchants trade to all countries. 

The English, at the present day, have great 
vigor of body and endurance. Other countrymen 
look slight and undersized beside them, and inva- 
lids. They are bigger men than the Americans. 
I suppose a hundred English taken at random out 
of the street, would weigh a fourth more, than so 
many Americans. Yet, I am told, the skeleton is 
not larger. They are round, ruddy, and hand- 
some ; at least, the whole bust is well formed ; 
and there is a tendency to stout and powerful 
frames. I remarked the stoutness, on my first 
landing at Liverpool ; porter, drayman, coach- 
man, guard, — what substantial, respectable, grand- 
fatherly figures, with costume and manners to 



RACE. 71 

suit. The American has arrived at the old 
mansion-house, and finds himself among uncles, 
aunts, and grandsires. The pictures on the chim- 
ney-tiles of his nursery were pictures of these 
people. Here they are in the identical costumes 
and air, which so took him. 

It is the fault of their forms that they grow 
stocky, and the women have that disadvantage, — 
few tall, slender figures of flowing shape, but 
stunted and thickset persons. The French say, 
that the Englishwomen have two left hands. But, 
in all ages, they are a handsome race. The bronze 
monuments of crusaders lying cross-legged, in the 
Temple Church at London, and those in Worces- 
ter and in Salisbury Cathedrals, which are seven 
hundred years old, are of the same type as the best 
youthful heads of men now in England ; — please 
by beauty of the same character, an expression 
blending goodnature, valor, and refinement, and, 
mainly, by that uncorrupt youth in the face of man- 
hood, which is daily seen in the streets of London. 

Both branches of the Scandinavian race are dis- 
tinguished for beauty. The anecdote of the hand- 
some captives which Saint Gregory found at Rome, 
A. D. 600, is matched by the testimony of the 
Norman chroniclers, five centuries later, who won- 
dered at the beauty and long flowing hair of the 



72 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

young English captives. Meantime, the Heims- 
kringla has frequent occasion to speak of the per- 
sonal beauty of its heroes. When it is considered 
what humanity, what resources of mental and 
moral power, the traits of the blonde race betoken, 
—-its accession to empire marks a new and finer 
epoch, wherein the old mineral force shall he sub- 
jugated at last by humanity, and shall plough in 
its furrow henceforward. It is not a final race, 
once a crab always crab, but a race with a future. 

On the English face are combined decision and 
nerve, with the fair complexion, blue eyes, and 
open and florid aspect. Hence the love of truth, 
hence the sensibility, the fine perception, and poetic 
construction. The fair Saxon man, with open front, 
and honest meaning, domestic, affectionate, is not 
the wood out of which cannibal, or inquisitor, or 
assassin is made, but he is moulded for law, law- 
ful trade, civility, marriage, the nurture of chil- 
dren, for colleges, churches, charities, and colonies. 

They are rather manly than warlike. When the 
war is over, the mask falls from the affectionate 
and domestic tastes, which make them women in 
kindness. This union of qualities is fabled in 
their national legend of Beauty and the Beast, or, 
long before, in the Greek legend of Hermaphro- 
dite. The two sexes are co-present in the Eng- 



RACE. 7b 

lish mind. I apply to Britannia, queen of seas 
and colonies, the words in which her latest novelist 
portrays his heroine : " she is as mild as she is 
game, and as game as she is mild." The English 
delight in the antagonism which combines in one 
person the extremes of courage and tenderness 
Nelson, dying at Trafalgar, sends his love to Lord 
Collingwood, and, like an innocent schoolboy that 
goes to bed, says, " Kiss me, Hardy," and turns to 
sleep. Lord Collingwood, his comrade, was of a 
nature the most affectionate and domestic. Ad- 
miral Rodney's figure approached to delicacy and 
effeminacy, and he declared himself very sensible 
to fear, which he surmounted only by considera- 
tions of honor and public duty. Clarendon 
says, the Duke of Buckingham was so modest and 
gentle, that some courtiers attempted to put affronts 
on him, until they found that this modesty and 
effeminacy was only a mask for the most terrible 
determination. And Sir Edward Parry said, the 
other day, of Sir John Franklin, that, " if he found 
"Wellington Sound open, he explored it ; for he was 
a man who never turned his back on a danger, yet 
of that tenderness, that he would not brush away 
a mosquito." Even for their highwaymen the 
same virtue is claimed, and Robin Hood comes 
described to us as mitissimus prcedonum, the gen- 
7 



74 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

tlest thief. But they know where their war- 
dogs lie. Cromwell, Blake, Marlborough, Chat- 
ham, Nelson, and Wellington, are not to be trifled 
with, and the brutal strength which lies at the 
bottom of society, the animal ferocity of the quays 
and cockpits, the bullies of the costarmongers of 
Shoreditch, Seven Dials, and Spitalfields, they 
know how to wake up. 

They have a vigorous health, and last well into 
middle and old age. The old men are as red as 
roses, and still handsome. A clear skin, a peach- 
bloom complexion, and good teeth, are found all 
over the island. They use a plentiful and nutri- 
tious diet. The operative cannot subsist on water- 
cresses. Beef, mutton, wheatbread, and malt- 
liquors, are universal among the first-class laborers. 
Good feeding is a chief point of national pride 
among the vulgar, and, in their caricatures, they 
represent the Frenchman as a poor, starved body. 
It is curious that Tacitus found the English beer 
already in use among the Germans : " they make 
from barley or wheat a drink corrupted into some 
resemblance to wine." Lord Chief Justice For- 
tescue in Henry VI. 's time, says, " The inhabitants 
of England drink no water, unless at certain times, 
on a religious score, and by way of penance." 
The extremes of poverty and ascetic penance, it 



EACE. 75 

would seem, never reach cold water in England. 
Wood, the antiquary, in describing the poverty 
and maceration of Father Lacey, an English Jesuit, 
does not deny him beer. He says, " his bed was 
under a thatching, and the way to it up a ladder ; 
his fare was coarse ; his drink, of a penny a gawn, 
or gallon." 

They have more constitutional energy than any 
other people. They think, with Henri Quatre, 
that manly exercises are the foundation of that 
elevation of mind which gives one nature ascendant 
over another ; or, with the Arabs, that the days 
spent in the chase are not counted in the length 
of life. They box, run, shoot, ride, row, and sail 
from pole to pole. They eat, and drink, and live 
jolly in the open air, putting a bar of solid sleep 
between day and day. They walk and ride as fast 
as they can, their head bent forward, as if urged 
on some pressing affair. The French say, that 
Englishmen in the street always walk straight be- 
fore them like mad dogs. Men and women walk 
with infatuation. As soon as he can handle a gun, 
hunting is the fine art of every Englishman of 
condition. They are the most voracious people of 
prey that ever existed. Every season turns out the 
aristocracy into the country, to shoot and fish. 
The more vigorous run out of the island to Eu- 



76 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

rope, to America, to Asia, to Africa, and Aus- 
tralia, to hunt with fury by gun, by trap, by 
harpoon, by lasso, with dog, with horse, with ele- 
phant, or with dromedary, all the game that is in 
nature. These men have written the game-books 
of all countries, as Hawker, Scrope, Murray, Her- 
bert, Maxwell, Cumming, and a host of travellers. 
The people at home are addicted to boxing, run- 
ning, leaping, and rowing matches. 

I suppose, the dogs and horses must be thanked 
for the fact, that the men have muscles almost as 
tough and supple as their own. If in every effi- 
cient man, there is first a fine animal, in the Eng- 
lish race it is of the best breed, a wealthy, juicy, 
broad-chested creature, steeped in ale and good 
cheer, and a little overloaded by his flesh. Men 
of animal nature rely, like animals, on their in- 
stincts. The Englishman associates well with 
dogs and horses. His attachment to the horse 
arises from the courage and address required to 
manage it. The horse finds out who is afraid of 
it, and does not disguise its opinion. Their 
young boiling clerks and lusty collegians like the 
company of horses better than the company of 
professors. I suppose, the horses are better com- 
pany for them. The horse has more uses than 
Buffon noted. If you go into the streets, every 



RACE. 77 

driver in bus or dray is a bully, and, if I wanted a 
good troop of soldiers, I should recruit among the 
stables. Add a certain degree of refinement to 
the vivacity of these riders, and you obtain the 
precise quality which makes the men and women 
of polite society formidable. 

They come honestly by their horsemanship, with 
Hengst and Horsa for their Saxon founders. The 
other branch of their race had been Tartar nomads. 
The horse was all their wealth. The children were 
fed on mares' milk. The pastures of Tartary 
were still remembered by the tenacious practice of 
the Norsemen to eat horseflesh at religious feasts. 
In the Danish invasions, the marauders seized 
upon horses where they landed, and were at once 
converted into a body of expert cavalry. 

At one time, this skill seems to have declined. 
Two centuries ago, the English horse never per- 
formed any eminent service beyond the seas ; 
and the reason assigned, was, that the genius of 
the English hath always more inclined them to foot- 
service, as pure and proper manhood, without any 
mixture ; whilst, in a victory on horseback, the 
credit ought to be divided betwixt the man and 
his horse. But in two hundred years, a change 
has taken place. Now, they boast that they un- 
derstand horses better than any other people 
7* 



78 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

in the world, and that their horses are become 
their second selves. 

" William the Conqueror being," says Camden, 
" better affected to beasts than to men, imposed 
heavy fines and punishments on those that should 
meddle with his game." The Saxon Chronicle 
says, " he loved the tall deer as if he were their 
father." And rich Englishmen have followed his 
example, according to their ability, ever since, in 
encroaching on the tillage and commons with their 
game-preserves. It is a proverb in England, 
that it is safer to shoot a man, than a hare. The 
severity of the game-laws certainly indicates an ex- 
travagant sympathy of the nation with horses and 
hunters. The gentlemen are always on horseback, 
and have brought horses to an ideal perfection, — 
the English racer is a factitious breed. A score 
or two of mounted gentlemen may frequently 
be seen running like centaurs down a hill nearly 
as steep as the roof of a house. Every inn-room 
is lined with pictures of races ; telegraphs com- 
municate, every hour, tidings of the heats from 
Newmarket and Ascot : and the House of Com- 
mons adjourns over the ' Derby Day.' 



CHAPTER V. 

ABILITY. 

The Saxon and the Northman are both Scandi 
navians. History does not allow us to fix the 
limits of the application of these names with any 
accuracy ; but from the residence of a portion of 
these people in France, and from some effect of that 
powerful soil on their blood and manners, the Nor- 
man has come popularly to represent in England 
the aristocratic, — and the Saxon the democratic 
principle. And though, I doubt not, the nobles 
are of both tribes, and the workers of both, yet 
we are forced to use the names a little mythically, 
one to represent the worker, and the other the 
enjoyer. 

The island was a prize for the best race. Each 

of the dominant races tried its fortune in turn. 

The Phoenician, the Celt, and the Goth, had already 

got in. The Roman came, but in the very day 

when his fortune culminated. He looked in the 

eyes of a new people that was to supplant his own. 

(79) 



80 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

He disembarked his legions, erected his camps and 
towers, — presently he heard bad news from Italy, 
and worse and worse, every year ; at last, he made 
a handsome compliment of roads and walls, and 
departed. But the Saxon seriously settled in the 
land, builded, tilled, fished, and traded, with Ger- 
man truth and adhesiveness. The Dane came, and 
divided with him. Last of all, the Norman, or 
French-Dane, arrived, and formally conquered, 
harried and ruled the kingdom. A century later, 
it came out, that the Saxon had the most bottom 
and longevity, had managed to make the victor 
speak the language and accept the law and usage 
of the victim ; forced the baron to dictate Saxon 
terms to Norman kings ; and, step by step, got all 
the essential securities of civil liberty invented and 
confirmed. The genius of the race and the genius 
of the place conspired to this effect. The island 
is lucrative to free labor, but not worth possession 
on other terms. The race was so intellectual, that 
a feudal or military tenure could not last longer 
than the war. The power of the Saxon-Danes, so 
thoroughly beaten in the war, that the name of 
English and villein were synonymous, yet so viva- 
cious as to extort charters from the kings, stood 
on the strong personality of these people. Sense 
and economy must rule in a world which is made 



ABILITY. 81 

of sense and economy, and the banker, with his 
seven per cent, drives the earl out of his castle. 
A nobility of soldiers cannot keep down a com- 
monalty of shrewd scientific persons. What 
signifies a pedigree of a hundred links, against a 
cotton-spinner with steam in his mill ; or, against a 
company of broad-shouldered Liverpool merchants, 
for whom Stephenson and Brunei are contriving 
locomotives and a tubular bridge ? 

These Saxons are the hands of mankind. They 
have the taste for toil, a distaste for pleasure or re- 
pose, and the telescopic appreciation of distant gain. 
They are the wealth-makers, — and by dint of 
mental faculty, which has its own conditions. The 
Saxon works after liking, or, only for himself; and 
to set him at work, and to begin to draw his mon- 
strous values out of barren Britain, all dishonor, 
fret, and barrier must be removed, and then his 
energies begin to play. 

The Scandinavian fancied himself surrounded 
by Trolls, — a kind of goblin men, with vast 
power of work and skilful production, — divine 
stevedores, carpenters, reapers, smiths, and masons, 
swift to reward every kindness done them, with 
gifts of gold and silver. In all English history, 
this dream comes to pass. Certain Trolls or work- 
ing brains, under the names of Alfred, Bede, Cax- 



82 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

ton, Bracton, Camden, Drake, Selden, Dugdale, 
Newton, Gibbon, Brindley, Watt, Wedgwood, 
dwell in the troll-mounts of Britain, and turn the 
sweat of their face to power and renown. 

If the race is good, so is the place. Nobody 
landed on this spellbound island with impunity. 
The enchantments of barren shingle and rough 
weather, transformed every adventurer into a la- 
borer. Each vagabond that arrived bent his neck 
to the yoke of gain, or found the air too tense for 
him. The strong survived, the weaker went to 
the ground. Even the pleasure-hunters and sots 
of England are of a tougher texture. A hard 
temperament had been formed by Saxon and Saxon- 
Dane, and such of these French or Normans as 
could reach it, were naturalized in every sense. 

All the admirable expedients or means hit upon 
in England, must be looked at as growths or irre- 
sistible offshoots of the expanding mind of the race. 
A man of that brain thinks and acts thus ; and his 
neighbor, being afflicted with the same kind of 
brain, though he is rich, and called a baron, or a 
duke, thinks the same thing, and is ready to 
allow the justice of the thought and act in his re- 
tainer or tenant, though sorely against his baronial 
or ducal will. 

The island was renowned in antiquity for its 



ABILITY. 83 

breed of mastiffs, so fierce, that, when their teeth 
were set, you must cut their heads off to part them. 
The man was like his dog. The people have that 
nervous bilious temperament, which is known by 
medical men to resist every means employed to 
make its possessor subservient to the will of others. 
The English game is main force to main force, the 
planting of foot to foot, fair play and open field, — 
a rough tug without trick or dodging, till one or 
both come to pieces. King Ethelwald spoke the 
language of his race, when he planted himself at 
Wimborne, and said, ' he would do one of two 
things, or there live, or there lie.' They hate 
craft and subtlety. They neither poison, nor way- 
lay, nor assassinate ; and, when they have pounded 
each other to a poultice, they will shake hands and 
be friends for the remainder of their lives. 

You shall trace these Gothic touches at school, 
at country fairs, at the hustings, and in parliament. 
No artifice, no breach of truth and plain dealing, 
— not so much as secret ballot, is suffered in the 
island. In parliament, the tactics of the opposition 
is to resist every step of the government, by a 
pitiless attack : and in a bargain, no prospect of 
advantage is so dear to the merchant, as the thought 
cf being tricked is mortifying. 

Sir Kenelm Digby, a courtier of Charles and 



84 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

James, who won the sea-fight of Scanderoon, was 
a model Englishman in his day. " His person was 
handsome and gigantic, he had so graceful elocu- 
tion and noble address, that, had he been dropt out 
of the clouds in any part of the world, he would 
have made himself respected: he was skilled in 
six tongues, and master of arts and arms."* Sir 
Kenelm wrote a book, " Of Bodies and of Souls," 
in which he propounds, that " syllogisms do breed 
or rather are all the variety of man's life. They 
are the steps by which we walk in all our busi- 
nesses. Man, as he is man, doth nothing else but 
weave such chains. Whatsoever he doth, swarving 
from this work, he doth as deficient from the na- 
ture of man : and, if he do aught beyond this, by 
breaking out into divers sorts of exterior actions, 
he findeth, nevertheless, in this linked sequel of 
simple discourses, the art, the cause, the rule, the 
bounds, and the model of it." f 

There spoke the genius of the English people. 
There is a necessity on them to be logical. They 
would hardly greet the good that did not logically 
fall, — as if it excluded their own merit, or shook 
their understandings. They are jealous of minds 
that have much facility of association, from an in- 
stinctive fear that the seeing many relations to their 

* Antony Wood. f Man's Soule, p. 29. 



ABILITY. 85 

thought might impair this serial continuity and 
lucrative concentration. They are impatient of 
genius, or of minds addicted to contemplation, and 
cannot conceal their contempt for sallies of thought, 
however lawful, whose steps they cannot count by 
their wonted rule. Neither do they reckon better 
a syllogism that ends in syllogism. For they have 
a supreme eye to facts, and theirs is a logic that 
brings salt to soup, hammer to nail, oar to boat, 
the logic of cooks, carpenters, and chemists, fol- 
lowing the sequence of nature, and one on which 
words make no impression. Their mind is not 
dazzled by its own means, but locked and bolted 
to results. They love men, who, like Samuel John- 
son, a doctor in the schools, would jump out of 
his syllogism the instant his major proposition was 
in danger, to save that, at all hazards. Their prac- 
tical vision is spacious, and they can hold many 
threads without entangling them. All the steps 
they orderly take ; but with the high logic of never 
confounding the minor and major proposition ; 
keeping their eye on their aim, in all the complicity 
and delay incident to the several series of means 
they employ. There is room in their minds for 
this and that, — a science of degrees. In the 
courts, the independence of the judges and the 
loyalty of the suitors are equally excellent. In 
8 



86 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Parliament, they have hit on that capital inven- 
tion of freedom, a constitutional opposition. And 
when courts and parliament are both deaf, the 
plaintiff is not silenced. Calm, patient, his weapon 
of defence from year to year is the obstinate repro- 
duction of the grievance, with calculations and es- 
timates. But, meantime, he is drawing numbers 
and money to his opinion, resolved that if all rem- 
edy fails, right of revolution is at the bottom of 
his charter-box. They are bound to see their 
measure carried, and stick to it through ages of 
defeat. 

Into this English logic, however, an infusion 
of justice enters, not so apparent in other races, 
— a belief in the existence of two sides, and the 
resolution to see fair play. There is on every 
question, an appeal from the assertion of the 
parties, to the proof of what is asserted. They 
are impious in their scepticism of a theory, but 
kiss the dust before a fact. Is it a machine, is it 
a charter, is it a boxer in the ring, is it a candidate 
on the hustings, — the universe of Englishmen 
will suspend their judgment, until the trial can be 
had. They are not to be led by a phrase, they want 
a working plan, a working machine, a working 
constitution, and will sit out the trial, and abide by 
the issue, and reject all preconceived theories. In 



ABILITY. 87 

politics they put blunt questions, which must be 
answered ; who is to pay the taxes ? what will you 
do for trade ? what for corn ? what for the spinner ? 

This singular fairness and its results strike the 
French with surprise. Philip de Commines says, 
" Now, in my opinion, among all the sovereignties 
I know in the world, that in which the public good 
is best attended to, and the least violence exer- 
cised on the people, is that of England." Life is 
safe, and personal rights ; and what is freedom, 
without security ? whilst, in France, < fraternity,' 
'equality,' and 'indivisible unity,' are names for 
assassination. Montesquieu said, " England is the 
freest country in the world. If a man in England 
had as many enemies as hairs on his head, no harm 
would happen to him." 

Their self-respect, their faith in causation, and 
their realistic logic or coupling of means to ends, have 
given them the leadership of the modern world. 
Montesquieu said, " No people have true common 
sense but those who are born in England." This 
common sense is a perception of all the conditions 
of our earthly existence, of laws that can be stated, 
and of laws that cannot be stated, or that are learned 
only by practice, in which allowance for friction is 
made. They are impious in their scepticism of 
theory, and in high departments they are cramped 



88 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

and sterile. But the unconditional surrender to 
facts, and the choice of means to reach their ends, 
are as admirable as with ants and bees. 

The bias of the nation is a passion for utility. 
They love the lever, the screw, and pulley, the 
Flanders draught-horse, the waterfall, wind-mills, 
tide-mills ; the sea and the wind to bear their 
freight ships. More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, 
which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize 
that dull pebble which is wiser than a man, 
whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the 
world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of 
the world. Now, their toys are steam and galvan- 
ism. They are heavy at the fine arts, but adroit 
at the coarse ; not good in jewelry or mosaics, but 
the best iron-masters, colliers, wool-combers, and 
tanners, in Europe. They apply themselves to 
agriculture, to draining, to resisting encroachments 
of sea, wind, travelling sands, cold and wet sub- 
soil ; to fishery, to manufacture of indispensable 
staples, — salt, plumbago, leather, wool, glass, pot- 
tery, and brick, — to bees and silkworms ; — and 
by their steady combinations they succeed. A 
manufacturer sits down to dinner in a suit of clothes 
which was wool on a sheep's back at sunrise. You 
dine with a gentleman on venison, pheasant, quail, 
pigeons, poultry, mushrooms, and pine-apples, al] 



ABILITY. 8& 

the growth of his estate. They are neat husbands 
for ordering all their tools pertaining to house and 
field. All are well kept. There is no want and 
no waste. They study use and fitness in their 
building, in the order of their dwellings, and in 
their dress. The Frenchman invented the ruffle, 
the Englishman added the shirt. The Englishman 
wears a sensible coat buttoned to the chin, of rough 
but solid and lasting texture. If he is a lord, he 
dresses a little worse than a commoner. They 
have diffused the taste for plain substantial hats, 
shoes, and coats through Europe. They think him 
the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use 
that you cannot notice or remember to describe it. 

They secure the essentials in their diet, in their 
arts, and manufactures. Every article of cutlery 
shows, in its shape, thought and long experience 
of workmen. They put the expense in the right 
place, as, in their sea- steamers, in the solidity of 
the machinery and the strength of the boat. The 
admirable equipment of their arctic ships carries 
London to the pole. They build roads, aqueducts, 
warm and ventilate houses. And they have im- 
pressed their directness and practical habit on mod- 
ern civilization. 

In trade, the Englishman believes that nobody 
breaks who ought not to break ; and, that, if he 
8* 



90 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

do not make trade every thing, it will make him 
nothing ; and acts on this belief. The spirit of 
system, attention to details, and the subordination 
of details, or, the not driving things too finely, 
(which is charged on the Germans,) constitute that 
despatch of business, which makes the mercantile 
power of England. 

In war, the Englishman looks to his means. He 
is of the opinion of Civilis, his German ancestor, 
whom Tacitus reports as holding " that the gods 
are on the side of the strongest ; " — a sentence 
which Bonaparte unconsciously translated, when 
he said, "that he had noticed, that Providence 
always favored the heaviest battalion." Their mil- 
itary science propounds that if the weight of the 
advancing column is greater than that of the resist- 
ing, the latter is destroyed. Therefore Welling- 
ton, when he came to the army in Spain, had 
every man weighed, first with accoutrements, and 
then without ; believing that the force of an 
army depended on the weight and power of the 
individual soldiers, in spite of cannon. Lord 
Palmerston told the House of Commons, that more 
care is taken of the health and comfort of English 
troops than of any other troops in the world ; and 
that, hence the English can put more men into the 
rank, on the day of action, on the field of battle; 



ABILITY. 91 

than any other army. Before the bombardment 
of the Danish forts in the Baltic, Nelson spent day 
after day, himself in the boats, on the exhausting 
service of sounding the channel. Clerk of Eldin's 
celebrated manoeuvre of breaking the line of sea- 
battle, and Nelson's feat of doubling, or stationing 
his ships one on the outer bow, and another on the 
outer quarter of each of the enemy's were only trans- 
lations into naval tactics of Bonaparte's rule of con- 
centration. Lord Collingwood was accustomed to 
tell his men, that, if they could fire three well-direct- 
ed broadsides in five minutes, no vessel could resist 
them ; and, from constant practice, they came to 
do it in three minutes and a half. 

But conscious that no race of better men exists, 
they rely most on the simplest means ; and do not 
like ponderous and difficult tactics, but delight to 
bring the affair hand to hand, where the victory lies 
with the strength, courage, and endurance of the 
individual combatants. They adopt every improve- 
ment in rig, in motor, in weapons, but they fun- 
damentally believe that the best stratagem in naval 
war, is to lay your ship close alongside of the ene- 
my's ship, and bring all your guns to bear on him, 
until you or he go to the bottom. This is the old 
fashion, which never goes out of fashion, neither 
in nor out of England. 



92 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

It is not usually a point of honor, nor a reli- 
gious sentiment, and never any whim that they will 
shed their blood for ; but usually property, and 
right measured by property, that breeds revolu- 
tion. They have no Indian taste for a tomahawk- 
dance, no French taste for a badge or a proclama- 
tion. The Englishman is peaceably minding his 
business, and earning his day's wages. But if you 
offer to lay hand on his day's wages, on his cow, 
or his right in common, or his shop, he will fight 
to the Judgment. Magna-charta, jury-trial, ha- 
beas-corpus, star-chamber, ship-money, Popery, 
Plymouth-colony, American Revolution, are all 
questions involving a yeoman's right to his dinner, 
and, except as touching that, would not have lashed 
the British nation to rage and revolt. 

Whilst they are thus instinct with a spirit of 
order, and of calculation, it must be owned they 
are capable of larger views ; but the indulgence is 
expensive to them, costs great crises, or accumu- 
lations of mental power. In common, the horse 
works best with blinders. Nothing is more in the 
line of English thought, than our unvarnished 
Connecticut question, " Pray, sir, how do you get 
your living when you are at home ? " The ques- 
tions of freedom, of taxation, of privilege, are money 
questions. Heavy fellows, steeped in beer and 



ABILITY. 93 

fleshpots, they are hard of hearing and dim of sight 
Their drowsy minds need to be flagellated by wai 
and trade and politics and persecution. They 
cannot well read a principle, except by the light of 
fagots and of burning towns. 

Tacitus says of the Germans, " powerful only in 
sudden efforts, they are impatient of toil and labor." 
This highly- destined race, if it had not somewhere 
added the chamber of patience to its brain, would 
not have built London. I know not from which 
of the tribes and temperaments that went to the 
composition of the people this tenacity was sup- 
plied, but they clinch every nail they drive. They 
have no running for luck, and no immoderate 
speed. They spend largely on their fabric, and 
await the slow return. Their leather lies tanning 
seven years in the vat. At Rogers's mills, in 
Sheffield, where I was shown the process of making 
a razor and a penknife, I was told there is no luck 
in making good steel ; that they make no mistakes, 
every blade in the hundred and in the thousand is 
good. And that is characteristic of all their work, 
— no more is attempted than is done. 

When Thor and his companions arrive at Utgard, 
he is told that "nobody is permitted to remain 
here, unless he understand some art, and excel in 
it ail other men." The same question is still put 



94 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

to the posterity of Thor. A nation of laborers, 
every man is trained to some one art or detail, and 
aims at perfection in that ; not content unless he 
has something in which he thinks he surpasses all 
other men. He would rather not do any thing at 
all, than not do it well. I suppose no people have 
such thoroughness ; — - from the highest to the 
lowest, every man meaning to be master of his art. 
" To show capacity," a Frenchman described as 
the end of a speech in debate : " no," said an 
Englishman, "but to set your shoulder at the 
wheel, — to advance the business." Sir Samuel 
Romilly refused to speak in popular assemblies, 
confining himself to the House of Commons, where 
a measure can be carried by a speech. The busi- 
ness of the House of Commons is conducted by a 
few persons, but these are hard-worked. Sir Rob- 
ert Peel "knew the Blue Books by heart." His 
colleagues and rivals carry Hansard in their heads. 
The high civil and legal offices are not beds of ease, 
but posts which exact frightful amounts of mental 
labor. Many of the great leaders, like Pitt, Can- 
ning, Castlereagh, Romilly, are soon worked to 
death. They are excellent judges in England of a 
good worker, and when they find one, like Claren- 
don, Sir Philip Warwick, Sir William Coventry, 
Ashley, Burke, Thurlow, Mansfield, Pitt, Eldon, 



ABILITY. 95 

Peel, or Russell, there is nothing too good or too 
high for him. 

They have a wonderful heat in the pursuit of a 
public aim. Private persons exhibit, in scientific 
and antiquarian researches, the same pertinacity as 
the nation showed in the coalitions in which it yoked 
Europe against the empire of Bonaparte, one after 
the other defeated, and still renewed, until the sixth 
hurled him from his seat. 

Sir John Herschel, in completion of the work 
of his father, who had made the catalogue of the 
stars of the northern hemisphere, expatriated him- 
self for years at the Cape of Good Hope, finished 
his inventory of the southern heaven, came home, 
and redacted it in eight years more ; — a work 
whose value does not begin until thirty years have 
elapsed, and thenceforward a record to all ages of 
the highest import. The Admiralty sent out the 
Arctic expeditions year after year, in search of Sir 
John Franklin, until, at last, they have threaded 
their way through polar pack and Behring's Straits, 
and solved the geographical problem. Lord Elgin, 
at Athens, saw the imminent ruin of the Greek 
remains, set up his scaffoldings, in spite of epi- 
grams, and, after five years' labor to collect them, 
got his marbles on shipboard. The ship struck a 
rock, and went to the bottom. He had them all 



96 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

fished up, by divers, at a vast expense, and brought 
to London ; not knowing that Haydon, Fuseli, 
and Canova, and all good heads in all the world, 
were to be his applauders. In the same spirit, 
were the excavation and research by Sir Charles 
Fellowes, for the Xanthian monument; and of 
Layard, for his Nineveh sculptures. 

The nation sits in the immense city they have 
builded, a London extended into every man's mind, 
though he live in Van Dieman's Land or Capetown. 
Faithful performance of what is undertaken to be 
performed, they honor in themselves, and exact in 
others, as certificate of equality with themselves. 
The modern world is theirs. They have made and 
make it day by day. The commercial relations of 
the world are so intimately drawn to London, that 
every dollar on earth contributes to the strength of 
the English government. And if all the wealth 
in the planet should perish by war or deluge, they 
know themselves competent to replace it. 

They have approved their Saxon blood, by their 
sea-going qualities ; their descent from Odin's 
smiths, by their hereditary skill in working in 
iron ; their British birth, by husbandry and im- 
mense wheat harvests; and justified their occu- 
pancy of the centre of habitable land, by their 
Bupreme ability and cosmopolitan spirit. They 



ABILITY. 97 

have tilled, builded, forged, spun, and woven. 
They have made the island a thoroughfare; and 
London a shop, a law-court, a record office, and 
scientific bureau, inviting to strangers ; a sanctuary 
to refugees of every political and religious opinion ; 
and such a city, that almost every active man, in 
any nation, finds himself, at one time or other, 
forced to visit it. 

In every path of practical activity, they have 
gone even with the best. There is no secret of 
war, in which they have not shown mastery. The 
6team-chamber of Watt, the locomotive of Ste- 
phenson, the cotton-mule of Roberts, perform the 
labor of the world. There is no department of 
literature, of science, or of useful art, in which 
they have not produced a first-rate book. It is 
England, whose opinion is waited for on the merit 
of a new invention, an improved science. And in 
the complications of the trade and politics of their 
vast empire, they have been equal to every exi- 
gency, with counsel and with conduct. Is it their 
luck, or is it in the chambers of their brain, — it 
is their commercial advantage, that whatever light 
appears in better method or happy invention, 
breaks out in their race. They are a family to 
which a destiny attaches, and the Banshee has 
sworn that a male heir shall never be wanting. 
9 



98 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

They have a wealth of men to fill important posts, 
and the vigilance of party criticism insures the 
selection of a competent person. 



A proof of the energy of the British people, is 
the highly artificial construction of the whole fabric. 
The climate and geography, I said, were factitious, 
as if the hands of man had arranged the conditions. 
The same character pervades the whole kingdom. 
Bacon said, " Home was a state not subject to para- 
doxes ; " but England subsists by antagonisms and 
contradictions. The foundations of its greatness 
are the rolling waves ; and, from first to last, it is 
a museum of anomalies. This foggy and rainy 
country furnishes the world with astronomical 
observations. Its short rivers do not afford water- 
power, but the land shakes under the thunder 
of the mills. There is no gold mine of any 
importance, but there is more gold in England 
than in all other countries. It is too far north for 
the culture of the vine, but the wines of all coun- 
tries are in its docks. The French Comte de Lau- 
raguais said, " no fruit ripens in England but a 
baked apple " ; but oranges and pine-apples are as 
cheap in London as in the Mediterranean. The 
Mark-Lane Express, or the Custom House Returns 
bear out to the letter th« r aunt of Pope, 



FACTITIOUS. 99 

" Let India boast her palms, nor envy we 
The weeping amber, nor the spicy tree, 
While, by our oaks, those precious loads are borne, 
And realms commanded which those trees adorn." 



The native cattle are extinct, but the island is full 
of artificial breeds. The agriculturist Bakewell, 
created sheep and cows and horses to order, and 
breeds in which every thing was omitted but what is 
economical. The cow is sacrificed to her bag, the 
ox to his surloin. Stall-feeding makes sperm-mills 
of the cattle, and converts the stable to a chemical 
factory. The rivers, lakes and ponds, too much 
fished, or obstructed by factories, are artificially 
filled with the eggs of salmon, turbot and herring. 
Chat Moss and the fens of Lincolnshire and Cam- 
bridgeshire are unhealthy and too barren to pay 
rent. By cylindrical tiles, and guttapercha tubes, 
five millions of acres of bad land have been drained 
and put on equality with the best, for rape-culture 
and grass. The climate too, which was already 
believed to have become milder and drier by the 
enormous consumption of coal, is so far reached 
by this new action, that fogs and storms are said to 
disappear. In due course, all England will be 
drained, and rise a second time out of the waters. 
The latest step was to call in the aid of steam to 
agriculture. Steam is almost an Englishman. I do 



100 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

not know but they will send him to Parliament, 
next, to make laws. He weaves, forges, saws, 
pounds, fans, and now he must pump, grind, dig, 
and plough for the farmer. The markets created 
by the manufacturing population have erected agri- 
culture into a great thriving and spending indus- 
try. The value of the houses in Britain is equal 
to the value of the soil. Artificial aids of all kinds 
are cheaper than the natural resources. No man 
can afford to walk, when the parliamentary-train 
carries him for a penny a mile. Gas-burners are 
cheaper than daylight in numberless floors in the 
cities. All the houses in London buy their water. 
The English trade does not exist for the exporta- 
tion of native products, but on its manufactures, or 
the making well every thing which is ill made else- 
where. They make ponchos for the Mexican, ban- 
dannas for the Hindoo, ginseng for the Chinese, 
beads for the Indian, laces for the Flemings, tele- 
scopes for astronomers, cannons for kings. 

The Board of Trade caused the best models of 
Greece and Italy to be placed within the reach of 
every manufacturing population. They caused to 
be translated from foreign languages and illustrat- 
ed by elaborate drawings, the most approved works 
of Munich, Berlin, and Paris. They have ransacked 
Italy to find new forms, to add a grace to the 



FACTITIOUS. 101 

products of their looms, their potteries, and their 
foundries. * 

The nearer we look, the more artificial is their 
social system. Their law is a network of fictions. 
Their property, a scrip or certificate of right to 
interest on money that no man ever saw. Their 
social classes are made by statute. Their ratios of 
power and representation are historical and legal. 
The last Reform-bill took away political power 
from a mound, a ruin, and a stone-wall, whilst 
Birmingham and Manchester, whose mills paid for 
the wars of Europe, had no representative. Pu- 
rity in the elective Parliament is secured by the 
purchase of seats. f Foreign power is kept by 
armed colonies ; power at home, by a standing 
army of police. The pauper lives better than the 
free laborer ; the thief better than the pauper ; 
and the transported felon better than the one 
under imprisonment. The crimes are factitious, 
as smuggling, poaching, non-conformity, heresy 
and treason. Better, they say in England, kill a 
man than a hare. The sovereignty of the seas is 
maintained by the impressment of seamen. " The 

• See Memorial of H. Greenough, p. 66, New York, 1853. 

f Sir S. Romilly, purest of English patriots, decided that the 
only independent mode of entering Parliament was to buy a seat, 
and he bought Horsham. 

9* 



102 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

impressment of seamen/' said Lord Eldon, " is the 
life of our navy." Solvency is maintained by 
means of a national debt, on the principle, "if 
you will not lend me the money, how can I pay 
you?" For the administration of justice, Sir 
Samuel Romilly's expedient for clearing the 
arrears of business in Chancery, was, the Chan- 
cellor's staying away entirely from his court. 
Their system of education is factitious. The Uni- 
versities galvanize dead languages into a semblance 
of life. Their church is artificial. The manners 
and customs of society are artificial; — made up 
men with made up manners ; — and thus the whole 
is Birminghamized, and we have a nation whose 
existence is a work of art ; — a cold, barren, almost 
arctic isle, being made the most fruitful, luxuri- 
ous and imperial land in the whole earth. 

Man in England submits to be a product of po- 
litical economy. On a bleak moor, a mill is built, 
a banking-house is opened, and men come in, as 
water in a sluice-way, and towns and cities rise. 
Man is made as a Birmingham button. The rapid 
doubling of the population dates from Watt's steam- 
engine. A landlord, who owns a province, says, 
" the tenantry are unprofitable ; let me have 
sheep." He unroofs the houses, and ships the 
population to America. The nation is accustomed 



SOLIDARITY. 103 

to the instantaneous creation of wealth. It is the 
maxim of their economists, " that the greater part 
in value of the wealth now existing in England, 
has been produced by human hands within the last 
twelve months." Meantime, three or four days' 
rain will reduce hundreds to starving in London. 



One secret of their power is their mutual good 
understanding. Not only good minds are born 
among them, but all the people have good minds. 
Every nation has yielded some good wit, if, as has 
chanced to many tribes, only one. But the intel- 
lectual organization of the English admits a commu- 
nicableness of knowledge and ideas among them 
all. An electric touch by any of their national 
ideas, melts them into one family, and brings the 
hoards of power which their individuality is always 
hiving, into use and play for all. Is it the small- 
ness of the country, or is it the pride and affection 
of race, — they have solidarity, or responsibleness, 
and trust in each other. 

Their minds, like wool, admit of a dye which is 
more lasting than the cloth. They embrace their 
cause with more tenacity than their life. Though 
not military, yet every common subject by the poll 
is fit to make a soldier of. These private reserved 



104 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

mute family-men can adopt a public end with all 
their heat, and this strength of affection makes 
the romance of their heroes. The difference of 
rank does not divide the national heart. The 
Danish poet Ohlenschlager complains, that who 
writes in Danish, writes to two hundred readers. 
In Germany, there is one speech for the learned, 
and another for the masses, to that extent, that, it 
is said, no sentiment or phrase from the works 
of any great German writer is ever heard among 
the lower classes. But in England, the language 
of the noble is the language of the poor. In Par- 
liament, in pulpits, in theatres, when the speakers 
rise to thought and passion, the language becomes 
idiomatic ; the people in the street best understand 
the best words. And their language seems drawn 
from the Bible, the common law, and the works 
of Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Pope, Young, Cow- 
per, Burns, and Scott. The island has produced 
two or three of the greatest men that ever existed, 
but they were not solitary in their own time. Men 
quickly embodied what Newton found out, in 
Greenwich observatories, and practical navigation. 
The boys know all that Hutton knew of strata, or 
Dalton of atoms, or Harvey of blood-yessels ; and 
these studies, once dangerous, are in fashion. So 
what is invented or known in agriculture, or in 



SOLIDARITY. 105 

trade, or in war, or in art, or in literature, and 
antiquities. A great ability, not amassed on a few 
giants, but poured into the general mind, so that 
each of them could at a pinch stand in the shoes 
of the other ; and they are more bound in char- 
acter, than differenced in ability or in rank. The 
laborer is a possible lord. The lord is a possible 
basket-maker. Every man carries the English sys- 
tem in his brain, knows what is confided to him, 
and does therein the best he can. The chancellor 
carries England on his mace, the midshipman at 
the point of his dirk, the smith on his hammer, the 
cook in the bowl of his spoon ; the postilion cracks 
his whip for England, and the sailor times his oars 
to " God save the King ! " The very felons have 
their pride in each other's English stanchness. 
In politics and in war, they hold together as by 
hooks of steel. The charm in Nelson's history, 
is, the unselfish greatness ; the assurance of being 
supported to the uttermost by those whom he sup- 
ports to the uttermost. Whilst they are some ages 
ahead of the rest of the world in the art of liv- 
ing ; whilst in some directions they do not repre- 
sent the modern spirit, but constitute it, — this 
vanguard of civility and power they coldly hold, 
marching in phalanx, lockstep, foot after foot, file 
after file of heroes, ten thousand deep. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MANNERS. 

I find the Englishman to be him of all men 
who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in 
themselves what they value in their horses, mettle 
and bottom. On the day of my arrival at Liver- 
pool, a gentleman, in describing to me the Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland, happened to say, " Lord 
Clarendon has pluck like a cock, and will fight till 
he dies ; " and, what I heard first I heard last, and 
the one thing the English value, is pluck. The 
cabmen have it ; the merchants have it ; the bishops 
have it ; the women have it ; the journals have it ; 
the Times newspaper, they say, is the pluckiest 
thing in England, and Sydney Smith had made it 
a proverb, that little Lord John Russell, the min- 
ister, would take the command of the Channel 
fleet to-morrow. 

They require you to dare to be of your own 
opinion, and they hate the practical cowards who 
cannot in affairs answer directly yes or no. They 

(106) 



MANNERS. 107 

dare to displease, nay, they will let you break all 
the commandments, if you do it natively, and with 
spirit. You must be somebody ; then you may 
do this or that, as you will. 

Machinery has been applied to all w T ork, and 
carried to such perfection, that little is left for the 
men but to mind the engines and feed the furnaces. 
But the machines require punctual service, and, 
as they never tire, they prove too much for their 
tenders. Mines, forges, mills, breweries, railroads, 
steampump, steamplough, drill of regiments, drill 
of police, rule of court, and shop-rule, have op- 
erated to give a mechanical regularity to all the 
habit and action of men. A terrible machine has 
possessed itself of the ground, the air, the men 
and women, and hardly even thought is free. 

The mechanical might and organization requires 
in the people constitution and answering spirits : 
and he who goes among them must have some 
w r eight of metal. At last, you take your hint 
from the fury of life you find, and say, one thing 
is plain, this is no country for fainthearted people : 
don't creep about diffidently ; make up your mind; 
take your own course, and you shall find respect 
and furtherance. 

It requires, men say, a good constitution to travel 
in Spain I say as much of England, for other 



108 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

cause, simply on account of the vigor and brawn 
of the people. Nothing but the most serious 
business, could give one any counterweight to 
these Baresarks, though they were only to order 
eggs and muffins for their breakfast. The Eng- 
lishman speaks with all his body. His elocution 
is stomachic, — as the American's is labial. The 
Englishman is very petulant and precise about his 
accommodation at inns, and on the roads ; a quid- 
die about his toast and his chop, and every species 
of convenience, and loud and pungent in his ex- 
pressions of impatience at any neglect. His vi- 
vacity betrays itself, at all points, in his manners, 
in his respiration, and the inarticulate noises he 
makes in clearing the throat ; — all significant of 
burly strength. He has stamina ; he can take the 
initiative in emergencies. He has that aplomb, 
which results from a good adjustment of the mor- 
al and physical nature, and the obedience of all 
the powers to the will ; as if the axes of his eyes 
were united to his backbone, and only moved with 
the trunk. 

This vigor appears in the incuriosity, and stony 
neglect, each of every other. Each man walks, eats, 
drinks, shaves, dresses, gesticulates, and, in every 
manner, acts, and suffers without reference to the by- 
standers, in his own fashion, only careful not to inter 



MANNERS. 109 

fere with them, or annoy them ; not that he is trained 
to neglect the eyes of his neighbors, — he is realty 
occupied with his own affair, and does not think of 
them. Every man in this polished country consults 
only his convenience, as much as a solitary pioneer in 
Wisconsin. I know not where any personal eccen- 
tricity is so freely allowed, and no man gives him- 
self any concern with it. An Englishman walks in 
a pouring rain, swinging his closed umbrella like a 
walking-stick ; wears a wig, or a shawl, or a sad- 
dle, or stands on his head, and no remark is made. 
And as he has been doing this for several genera- 
tions, it is now in the blood. 

In short, every one of these islanders is an island 
himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable. In a 
company of strangers, you would think him deaf; 
his eyes never wander from his table and news- 
paper. He is never betrayed into any curiosity or 
unbecoming emotion. They have all been trained 
in one severe school of manners, and never put 
off the harness. He does not give his hand. He 
does not let you meet his eye. It is almost an 
affront to look a man in the face, without being 
introduced. In mixed or in select companies they 
do not introduce persons ; so that a presentation is 
a circumstance as valid as a contract. Introduc- 
tions are sacraments. He withholds his name. At 
10 



110 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

the hotel, he is hardly willing to whisper it to the 
clerk at the book-office. If he give you his private 
address on a card, it is like an avowal of friend- 
ship ; and his bearing, on being introduced, is cold, 
even though he is seeking your acquaintance, and 
is studying how he shall serve you. 

It was an odd proof of this impressive energy, 
that, in my lectures, I hesitated to read and threw 
out for its impertinence many a disparaging phrase, 
which I had been accustomed to spin, about poor, 
thin, unable mortals ; — so much had the fine 
physique and the personal vigor of this robust race 
worked on my imagination. 

I happened to arrive in England, at the moment 
of a commercial crisis. But it was evident, that, 
let who will fail, England will not. These people 
have sat here a thousand years, and here will con- 
tinue to sit. They will not break up, or arrive at 
any desperate revolution, like their neighbors ; for 
they have as much energy, as much continence of 
character as they ever had. The power and pos- 
session which surround them are their own crea- 
tion, and they exert the same commanding industry 
at this moment. 

They are positive, methodical, cleanly, and for- 
mal, loving routine, and conventional ways ; loving 
truth and religion, to be sure, but inexorable on 



MANNERS. Hi 

points of form. All the world praises the comfort 
and private appointments of an English inn, and 
of English households. You are sure of neatness 
and of personal decorum. A Frenchman may 
possibly be clean ; an Englishman is conscientious- 
ly clean. A certain order and complete propriety 
is found in his dress and in his belongings. 

Born in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps 
him in doors whenever he is at rest, and being of 
an affectionate and loyal temper, he dearly loves 
his house. If he is rich, he buys a demesne, and 
builds a hall ; if he is in middle condition, he 
spares no expense on his house. "Without, it is all 
planted : within, it is wainscoted, carved, curtained, 
hung with pictures, and filled with good furniture. 
'Tis a passion which survives all others, to deck 
and improve it. Hither he brings all that is rare 
and costly, and with the national tendency to sit 
fast in the same spot for many generations, it comes 
to be, in the course of time, a museum of heirlooms, 
gifts, and trophies of the adventures and exploits 
of the family. He is very fond of silver plate, 
and, though he have no gallery of portraits of his 
ancestors, he has of their punch-bowls and porrin- 
gers. Incredible amounts of plate are found in 
good houses, and the poorest have some spoon or 
saucepan, gift of a godmother, saved out of better 
times. 



112 ENGLISH TRA.ITS. 

An English family consists of a few persons, 
who, from youth to age, are found revolving with- 
in a few feet of each other, as if tied by some in- 
visible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we 
have seen attaching the two Siamese. England 
produces under favorable conditions of ease and 
culture the finest women in the world. And, 
as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the 
women inspire and refine them. Nothing can 
be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing 
more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than 
the courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes. 
The song of 1596 says, "The wife of every Eng- 
lishman is counted blest." The sentiment of Im- 
ogen in Cymbeline is copied from English nature ; 
and not less the Portia of Brutus, the Kate Percy, 
and the Desdemona. The romance does not exceed 
the height of noble passion in Mrs. Lucy Hutch- 
inson, or in Lady Russell, or even as one discerns 
through the plain prose of Pepys's Diary, the sa- 
cred habit of an English wife. Sir Samuel Romilly 
could not bear the death of his wife. Every class 
has its noble and tender examples. 

Domesticity is the taproot which enables the 
nation to branch wide and high. The motive and 
end of their trade and empire is to guard the in- 
dependence and privacy of their homes. Nothing 



MANNERS. 113 

so much marks their manners as the concentra- 
tion on their household ties. This domesticity 
is carried into court and camp. "Wellington 
governed India and Spain and his own troops, 
and fought battles like a good family-man, paid 
his debts, and, though general of an army in 
Spain, could not stir abroad for fear of public 
creditors. This taste for house and parish merits 
has of course its doting and foolish side. Mr. 
Cobbett attributes the huge popularity of Perce- 
val, prime minister in 1810, to the fact that he 
was wont to go to church, every Sunday, with a 
large quarto gilt prayer-book under one arm, his 
wife hanging on the other, and followed by a long 
brood of children. 

They keep their old customs, costumes, and 
pomps, their wig and mace, sceptre and crown. 
The middle ages still lurk in the streets of Lon- 
don. The Knights of the Bath take oath to 
defend injured ladies ; the gold-stick-in-waiting 
survives. They repeated the ceremonies of the 
eleventh century in the coronation of the present 
Queen. A hereditary tenure is natural to them. 
Offices, farms, trades, and traditions descend so. 
Their leases run for a hundred and a thousand 
years. Terms of service and partnership are life- 
Jong, or are inherited. " Holdship has been with 
10* 



114 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

me," said Lord Eldon, " eight-and-twenty years, 
knows all my business and books." Antiquity 
of usage is sanction enough. Wordsworth, says 
of the small freeholders of Westmoreland, " Many 
of these humble sons of the hills had a conscious- 
ness that the land which they tilled had for more 
than five hundred years been possessed by men of 
the same name and blood." The ship-carpenter 
in the public yards, my lord's gardener and porter, 
have been there for more than a hundred years, 
grandfather, father, and son. 

The English power resides also in their dislike 
of change. They have difficulty in bringing their 
reason to act, and on all occasions use their mem- 
ory first. As soon as they have rid themselves of 
some grievance, and settled the better practice, 
they make haste to fix it as a finality, and never 
wish to hear of alteration more. 

Every Englishman is an embryonic chancellor : 
His instinct is to search for a precedent. The fa- 
vorite phrase of their law, is, " a custom whereof 
the memory of man runneth not back to the con- 
trary." The barons say, " JSIolumus mutari ; " and 
the cockneys stifle the curiosity of the foreigner on 
the reason of any practice, with " Lord, sir, it was 
always so." They hate innovation. Bacon told 
them, Time was the right reformer; Chatham, 



MANNERS. 115 

that " confidence was a plant of slow growth ; " 
Canning, to " advance with the times ; " and Wel- 
lington, that " habit was ten times nature." All 
their statesmen learn the irresistibility of the tide 
of custom, and have invented many fine phrases to 
cover this slowness of perception, and prehensility 
of tail. 

A seashell should be the crest of England, not 
only because it represents a power built on the 
waves, but also the hard finish of the men. The 
Englishman is finished like a cowry or a murex. 
After the spire and the spines are formed, or, with 
the formation, a juice exudes, and a hard enamel 
varnishes every part. The keeping of the proprie- 
ties is as indispensable as clean linen. No merit 
quite countervails the want of this, whilst this 
sometimes stands in lieu of all. " 'Tis in bad 
taste," is the most formidable word an Englishman 
can pronounce. But this japan costs them dear. 
There is a prose in certain Englishmen, which ex- 
ceeds in wooden deadness all rivalry with other 
countrymen. There is a knell in the conceit and 
externality of their voice, which seems to say, 
Leave all hope behind. In this Gibraltar of pro- 
priety, mediocrity gets intrenched, and consolidat- 
ed, and founded in adamant. An Englishman of 
fashion is like one of those souvenirs, bound in 



116 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

gold vellum, enriched with delicate engravings, 
on thick hot-pressed paper, fit for the hands of 
ladies and princes, but with nothing in it worth 
reading or remembering. 

A severe decorum rules the court and the cot- 
tage. "When Thalberg, the pianist, was one even- 
ing performing before the Queen, at Windsor, in 
a private party, the Queen accompanied him with 
her voice. The circumstance took air, and all 
England shuddered from sea to sea. The indeco- 
rum was never repeated. Cold, repressive man- 
ners prevail. No enthusiasm is permitted except 
at the opera. They avoid every thing marked. 
They require a tone of voice that excites no atten- 
tion in the room. Sir Philip Sydney is one of the 
patron saints of England, of whom Wotton said, 
" His wit was the measure of congruity." 

Pretension and vaporing are once for all distaste- 
ful. They keep to the other extreme of low tone 
in dress and manners. They avoid pretension and 
go right to the heart of the thing. They hate 
nonsense, sentimentalism, and highflown expres- 
sion ; they use a studied plainness. Even Brum- 
mel their fop was marked by the severest simplicity 
in dress. They value themselves on the absence of 
every thing theatrical in the public business, and on 
conciseness and going to the point, in private affairs. 



MANNERS. 117 

In an aristocratical country, like England, not 
the Trial by Jury, but the dinner is the capital 
institution. It is the mode of doing honor to a 
stranger, to invite him to eat, — and has been for 
many hundred years. " And they think," says 
the Venetian traveller of 1500, " no greater honor 
can be conferred or received, than to invite others 
to eat with them, or to be invited themselves, and 
they would sooner give five or six ducats to pro- 
vide an entertainment for a person, than a groat 
to assist him in any distress." * It is reserved to 
the end of the day, the family-hour being generally 
six, in London, and, if any company is expected, one 
or two hours later. Every one dresses for dinner, 
in his own house, or in another man's. The guests 
are expected to arrive within half an hour of the 
time fixed by card of invitation, and nothing but 
death or mutilation is permitted to detain them. 
The English dinner is precisely the model on 
which our own are constructed in the Atlantic 
cities. The company sit one or two hours, before 
the ladies leave the table. The gentlemen re- 
main over their wine an hour longer, and rejoin 
the ladies in the drawing-room, and take coffee. 
The dress-dinner generates a talent of table-talk, 

* " Relation of England.' Printed by the Camden Society 



118 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

which reaches great perfection : the stories are 
bo good, that one is sure they must have been 
often told before, to have got such happy turns. 
Hither come all manner of clever projects, bits of 
popular science, of practical invention, of miscel- 
laneous humor ; political, literary, and personal 
news ; railroads, horses, diamonds, agriculture, 
horticulture, pisciculture, and wine. 

English stories, bon-mots, and the recorded 
table-talk of their wits, are as good as the best of 
the French. In America, we are apt scholars, 
but have not yet attained the same perfection : 
for the range of nations from which London 
draws, and the steep contrasts of condition create 
the picturesque in society, as broken country makes 
picturesque landscape, whilst our prevailing equal- 
ity makes a prairie tameness : and secondly, be- 
cause the usage of a dress-dinner every day at 
dark, has a tendency to hive and produce to ad- 
vantage every thing good. Much attrition has 
worn every sentence into a bullet. Also one meets 
now and then with polished men, who know every 
thing, have tried every thing, can do every thing, 
and are quite superior to letters and science. What 
could they not, if only they would 1 



CHAPTER VII. 

TRUTH. 

The Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of 
heart, which contrasts with the Latin races. The 
German name has a proverbial significance of sin- 
cerity and honest meaning. The arts bear testi- 
mony to it. The faces of clergy and laity in old 
sculptures and illuminated missals are charged with 
earnest belief. Add to this hereditary rectitude, 
the punctuality and precise dealing which com- 
merce creates, and you have the English truth and 
credit. The government strictly performs its en- 
gagements. The subjects do not understand tri- 
fling on its part. When any breach of promise 
occurred, in the old days of prerogative, it was 
resented by the people as an intolerable grievance. 
And, in modern times, any slipperiness in the gov- 
ernment in political faith, or any repudiation or 
crookedness in matters of finance, would bring the 
whole nation to a committee of inquiry and reform, 
Private men keep their promises, never so trivial 

(119) 



120 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Down goes the flying word on the tablets, and is 
indelible as Domesday Book. 

Their practical power rests on their national sin- 
cerity. Veracity derives from instinct, and marks 
superiority in organization. Nature has endowed 
some animals with cunning, as a compensation for 
strength withheld ; but it has provoked the malice 
of all others, as if avengers of public wrong. In 
the nobler kinds, where strength could be afforded, 
her races are loyal to truth, as truth is the founda- 
tion of the social state. Beasts that make no truce 
with man, do not break faith with each other. 'Tis 
said, that the wolf, who makes a cache of his prey, 
and brings his fellows with him to the spot, if, on 
digging, it is not found, is instantly and unresist- 
ingly torn in pieces. English veracity seems to 
result on a sounder animal structure, as if they 
could afford it. They are blunt in saying what 
they think, sparing of promises, and they require 
plaindealing of otheis. "We will not have to do with 
a man in a mask. Let us know the truth. Draw a 
straight line, hit whom and where it will. Alfred, 
whom the affection of the nation makes the type 
of their race, is called by a writer at the Norman 
Conquest, the truth-speaker ; Alueredus veridicus. 
Geoffrey of Monmouth says of King Aurelius, uncle 
of Arthur, that " above all things he hated a lie." 



TRUTH. 121 

The Northman Guttorm said to King Olaf, " it is 
royal work to fulfil royal words." The mottoes 
of their families are monitory proverbs, as, Fare 
fac, — - Say, do, — of the Fairfaxes ; Say and seal, 
of the house of Fiennes ; Vero nil verius, of the 
De Veres. To be king of their word, is their pride. 
When they unmask cant, they say, " the English 
of this is," &c. ; and to give the lie is the extreme 
insult. The phrase of the lowest of the people is 
"honor-bright," and their vulgar praise, "his 
word is as good as bis bond." They hate shufhing 
and equivocation, and the cause is damaged in the 
public opinion, on which any paltering can be fixed. 
Even Lord Chesterfield, with his French breeding, 
when he came to define a gentleman, declared that 
truth made his distinction: and nothing ever 
spoken by him would find so hearty a suffrage 
from his nation. The Duke of Wellington, who 
had the best right to say so, advises the French 
General Kellermann, that he may rely on the parole 
of an English officer. The English, of all classes, 
value themselves on this trait, as distinguishing 
them from the French, who, in the popular belief, 
are more polite than true. An Englishman under- 
states, avoids the superlative, checks himself in 
compliments, alleging, that in the French language, 
one cannot speak without lying. 
11 



122 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

They love reality in wealth, power, hospitality, 
and do not easily learn to make a show, and take 
the world as it goes. They are not fond of orna- 
ments, and if they wear them, they must be gems. 
They read gladly in old Fuller, that a lady, in the 
reign of Elizabeth, " would have as patiently digest- 
ed a lie, as the wearing of false stones or pendants 
of counterfeit pearl." They have the earth-hunger, 
or preference for property in land, which is said to 
mark the Teutonic nations. They build of stone : 
public and private buildings are massive and dura- 
ble : In comparing their ships' houses, and public 
offices with the American, it is commonly said, 
that they spend a pound, where we spend a dollar. 
Plain rich clothes, plain rich equipage, plain rich 
finish throughout their house and belongings, mark 
the English truth. 

They confide in each other, — English believes 
in English. The French feel the superiority of 
this probity. The Englishman is not springing a 
trap for his admiration, but is honestly minding his 
business. The Frenchman is vain. Madame de 
Stael says, that the English irritated Napoleon, 
mainly, because they have found out how to unite 
success with honesty. She was not aware how 
wide an application her foreign readers would give 
to the remark. Wellington discovered the ruin. 



TRUTH. 123 

of Bonaparte's affairs, by his own probity. He 
augured ill of the empire, as soon as he saw that 
it was mendacious, and lived by war. If war do 
not bring in its sequel new trade, better agricul 
ture and manufactures, but only games, fireworks, 
and spectacles, — no prosperity could support it; 
much less, a nation decimated for conscripts, and 
out of pocket, like France. So he drudged for years 
on his military works at Lisbon, and from this base 
at last extended his gigantic lines to Waterloo, 
believing in his countrymen and their syllogisms 
above all the rhodomontade of Europe. 

At a St. George's festival, in Montreal, where I 
happened to be a guest, since my return home, I 
observed that the chairman complimented his com- 
patriots, by saying, " they confided that wherever 
they met an Englishman, they found a man who 
would speak the truth." And one cannot think this 
festival fruitless, if, all over the world, on the 23d 
of April, wherever two or three English are found, 
they meet to encourage each other in the nation- 
ality of veracity. 

In the power of saying rude truth, sometimes in 
the lion's mouth, no men surpass them. On the 
king's birthday, when each bishop was expected 
to offer the king a purse of gold, Latimer gave 
Henry VIII. a copy of the Vulgate, with a mark 



124 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

at the passage, "Whoremongers and adulterers 
God will judge ; " and they so honor stoutness in 
each other, that the king passed it over. They 
are tenacious of their belief, and cannot easily 
change their opinions to suit the hour. They are 
like ships with too much head on to come quickly 
about, nor will prosperity or even adversity be 
allowed to shake their habitual view of conduct. 
Whilst I was in London, M. Guizot arrived there 
on his escape from Paris, in February, 1848. 
Many private friends called on him. His name 
was immediately proposed as an honorary member 
of the Athenaeum. M. Guizot was blackballed. 
Certainly, they knew the distinction of his name. 
But the Englishman is not fickle. He had really 
made up his mind, now for years as he read his 
newspaper, to hate and despise M. Guizot ; and the 
altered position of the man as an illustrious exile, and 
a guest in the country, makes no difference to him, 
as it would instantly to an American. 

They require the same adherence, thorough con- 
viction and reality in public men. It is the want 
of character which makes the low reputation of the 
Irish members. " See them," they said, '■' one 
hundred and twenty-seven all voting like sheep, 
never proposing any thing, and all but four voting 
the income tax," — which was an ill-judged conces- 



TRUTH. 125 

sion of the Government, relieving Irish property 
from the burdens charged on English. 

They have a horror of adventurers in or out of 
Parliament. The ruling passion of Englishmen, in 
these days, is, a terror of humbug. In the same 
proportion, they value honesty, stoutness, and ad- 
herence to your own. They like a man committed 
to his objects. They hate the French, as frivolous ; 
they hate the Irish, as aimless ; they hate the Ger- 
mans, as professors. In February, 1848, they 
said, Look, the French king and his party fell for 
want of a shot ; they had not conscience to shoot, 
so entirely was the pith and heart of monarchy 
eaten out. 

They attack their own politicians every day, on 
the same grounds, as adventurers. They love 
stoutness in standing for your right, in declining 
money or promotion that costs any concession. 
The barrister refuses the silk gown of Queen's 
Counsel, if his junior have it one day earlier. 
Lord Collingwood would not accept his medal for 
victory on 14th February, 1797, if he did not 
receive one for victory on 1st June, 1794 ; and the 
long withholden medal was accorded. When Cas- 
tlereagh dissuaded Lord Wellington from going to 
the king's levee, until the unpopular Cintra busi- 
ness had been explained, he replied, " You furnish 
11* 



126 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

me a reason for going. I will go to this, or I will 
never go to a king's levee." The radical mob at 
Oxford cried after the tory lord Eldon, " There's old 
Eldon ; cheer him ; he never ratted." They have 
given the parliamentary nickname of Trimmers to 
the timeservers, whom English character does not 
love.* 

They are very liable in their politics to extra- 
ordinary delusions, thus, to believe what stands 
recorded in the gravest books, that the movement 
of 10 April, 1848, was urged or assisted by for- 
eigners : which, to be sure, is paralleled by the 
democratic whimsy in this country, which I have 
noticed to be shared by men sane on other points, 
that the English are at the bottom of the agitation 
of slavery, in American politics : and then again 
to the French popular legends on the subject of 
perfidious Albion. But suspicion will make fools 
of nations as of citizens. 



* It is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of solitary 
virtue in the face of the honors lately paid in England to the Em- 
peror Louis Napoleon. I am sure that no Englishman whom I had 
the happiness to know, consented, when the aristocracy and the 
commons of London cringed like a Neapolitan rabble, before a suc- 
cessful thief. But — how to resist one step, though odious, in a 
linked series of state necessities ? — Governments must always learn 
too late, that the use of dishonest agents is as ruinous for nation! 
as for single men. 



TRUTH. 127 

A slow temperament makes them less rapid and 
ready than other countrymen, and has given occa- 
sion to the observation, that English wit comes 
afterwards, — which the French denote as espri* 
d'escalier. This dulness makes their attachment 
to home, and their adherence in all foreign coun- 
tries to home habits. The Englishman who visits 
Mount Etna, will carry his teakettle to the top. 
The old Italian author of the " Relation of Eng- 
land " (in 1500), says, " I have it on the best 
information, that, when the war is actually raging 
most furiously, they will seek for good eating, and 
all their other comforts, without thinking what 
harm might befall them." Then their eyes seem 
to be set at the bottom of a tunnel, and they affirm 
the one small fact they know, with the best faith 
in the world that nothing else exists. And, as 
their own belief in guineas is perfect, they readily, 
on all occasions, apply the pecuniary argument as 
final. Thus when the Rochester rappings began to 
be heard of in England, a man deposited £100 in a 
sealed box in the Dublin Bank, and then advertised 
in the newspapers to all somnambulists, mesmer- 
izers, and others, that whoever could tell him the 
number of his note, should have the money. He 
let it lie there six months, the newspapers now 
and then, at his instance, stimulating the attention 



128 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

of the adepts ; but none could ever tell him ; and 
he said, " now let me never be bothered more 
with this proven lie." It is told of a good Sir 
John, that he heard a case stated by counsel, and 
made up his mind ; then the counsel for the other 
side taking their turn to speak, he found himself 
so unsettled and perplexed, that he exclaimed, " So 
help me God ! I will never listen to evidence 
again." Any number of delightful examples of 
this English stolidity are the anecdotes of Europe. 
I knew a very worthy man, — a magistrate, I be- 
lieve he was, in the town of Derby, — who went 
to the opera, to see Malibran. In one scene, the 
heroine was to rush across a ruined bridge. Mr. 
B. arose, and mildly yet firmly called the attention 
of the audience and the performers to the fact, 
that, in his judgment, the bridge was unsafe ! 
This English stolidity contrasts with French wit 
and tact. The French, it is commonly said, have 
greatly more influence in Europe than the English. 
What influence the English have is by brute force 
of wealth and power ; that of the French by affin- 
ity and talent. The Italian is subtle, the Spaniard 
treacherous : tortures, it was said, could never 
wrest from an Egyptian the confession of a se- 
cret. None of these traits belong to the Eng- 
lishman. His choler and conceit force every thing 



TRUTH. 123 

out. Defoe, who knew his countrymen well, says 
of them, 

" In close intrigue, their faculty's but weak, 
For generally whate'er they know, they speak, 
And often their own counsels undermine 
By mere infirmity without design ; 
From whence, the learned say, it doth proceed, 
That English treasons never can succeed ; 
For they're so open-hearted, you may know 
Their own most secret thoughts, and others' too. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CHARACTER. 

The English race are reputed morose. I do 
not know that they have sadder brows than their 
neighbors of northern climates. They are sad by 
comparison with the singing and dancing nations : 
not sadder, but slow and staid, as finding their 
joys at home. They, too, believe that where there 
is no enjoyment of life, there can be no vigor and 
art in speech or thought : that your merry heart 
goes all the way, your sad one tires in a mile. 
This trait of gloom has been fixed on them by 
French, travellers, who, from Froissart, Voltaire, 
Le Sage, Mirabeau, down to the lively journalists 
of the feuilletons, have spent their wit on the so- 
lemnity of their neighbors. The French say, gay 
conversation is unknown in their island. The 
Englishman finds no relief from reflection, except 
in reflection. When he wishes for amusement, he 
goes to work. His hilarity is like an attack of 
fever. Religion, the theatre, and the reading the 

(130) 



CHARACTER. 131 

books of his country, all feed and increase his nat- 
ural melancholy. The police does not interfere with 
public diversions. It thinks itself bound in duty 
to respect the pleasures and rare gayety of this in- 
consolable nation ; and their well-known courage 
is entirely attributable to their disgust of life. 

I suppose, their gravity of demeanor and their 
few words have obtained this reputation. As com- 
pared with the Americans, I think them cheerful 
and contented. Young people, in this country, 
are much more prone to melancholy. The English 
have a mild aspect, and a ringing cheerful voice. 
They are large-natured, and not so easily amused 
as the southerners, and are among them as grown 
people among children, requiring war, or trade, or 
engineering, or science, instead of frivolous games. 
They are proud and private, and, even if disposed 
to recreation, will avoid an open garden. They 
sported sadly ; Us s'amusaient tristement, selon la 
coutume de leur pays, said Froissart ; and, I suppose, 
never nation built their party-walls so thick, or 
their garden-fences so high. Meat and wine pro- 
duce no effect on them : they are just as cold, 
quiet, and composed, at the end, as at the begin- 
ning of dinner. 

The reputation of taciturnity they have enjoyed 
for six or seven hundred years ; and a kind of 



132 ENGLlSn TRAITS. 

pride in bad public speaking is noted in the House 
of Commons, as if they were willing to show that 
they did not live by their tongues, or thought they 
spoke well enough if they had the tone of gentle- 
men. In mixed company, they shut their mouths. 
A Yorkshire mill-owner told me, he had ridden 
more than once all the way from London to Leeds, 
in the first-class carriage, with the same persons, 
and no word exchanged. The club-houses were 
established to cultivate social habits, and it is rare 
that more than two eat together, and oftenest one 
eats alone. Was it then a stroke of humor in the 
serious Swedenborg, or was it only his pitiless 
logic, that made him shut up the English souls in 
a heaven by themselves ? 

They are contradictorily described as sour, splen- 
etic, and stubborn, — and as mild, sweet, and 
sensible. The truth is, they have great range and 
variety of character. Commerce sends abroad 
multitudes of different classes. The choleric 
Welshman, the fervid Scot, the bilious resident in 
the East or West Indies, are wide of the perfect 
behavior of the educated and dignified man of 
family. So is the burly farmer ; so is the country 
'squire, with his narrow and violent life. In every 
inn, is the Commercial-Room, in which 'trav- 
ellers,' or bagmen who carry patterns ^ and solicit 



CHARACTER. 133 

orders, for the manufacturers, are wont to be en- 
tertained. It easily happens that this class should 
characterize England to the foreigner, who meets 
them on the road, and at every public house, whilst 
the gentry avoid the taverns, or seclude themselves 
whilst in them. 

But these classes are the right English stock, 
and may fairly show the national qualities, before 
yet art and education have dealt with them. They 
are good lovers, good haters, slow but obstinate 
admirers, and, in all things, very much steeped in 
their temperament, like men hardly awaked from 
deep sleep, which they enjoy. Their habits and 
instincts cleave to nature. They are of the earth, 
earthy ; and of the sea, as the sea-kinds, attached 
to it for what it yields them, and not from any senti- 
ment. They are full of coarse strength, rude exer- 
cise, butcher's meat, and sound sleep ; and suspect 
any poetic insinuation or any hint for the conduct 
of life which reflects on this animal existence, as if 
isomebody were fumbling at the umbilical cord and 
might stop their supplies. They doubt a man's 
sound judgment, if he does not eat with appetite, 
and shake their heads if he is particularly chaste. 
Take them as they come, you shall find in the 
common people a surly indifference, sometimes 
gruffness and ill temper ; and, in minds of more 
12 



134 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

power, magazines of inexhaustible war, chal- 
lenging 

" The ruggedest hour that time and spite dare bring 
To frown upon the enraged Northumberland." 

They are headstrong believers and defenders of 
their opinion, and not less resolute in maintaining 
their whim and perversity. Hezekiah Woodward 
wrote a book against the Lord's Prayer. And 
one can believe that Burton the Anatomist of Mel- 
ancholy, having predicted from the stars the hour 
of his death, slipped the knot himself round his 
own neck, not to falsify his horoscope. 

Their looks bespeak an invincible stoutness : 
they have extreme difficulty to run away, and will 
die game. Wellington said of the young coxcombs 
of the Life-Guards delicately brought up, i( but 
the puppies fight well ; " and Nelson said of his 
sailors, " they really mind shot no more than 
peas." Of absolute stoutness no nation has more 
or better examples. They are good at storming 
redoubts, at boarding frigates, at dying in the last 
ditch, or any desperate service which has daylight 
and honor in it ; but not, I think, at enduring the 
rack, or any passive obedience, like jumping off a 
castle-^ocf at the word of a czar. Being both 
vascular and highly organized, so as to be very 



CHARACTER. 135 

sensible of pain ; and intellectual, so as to see 
reason and glory in a matter. 

Of that constitutional force, which yields the 
supplies of the day, they have the more than enough, 
the excess which creates courage on fortitude, gen- 
ius in poetry, invention in mechanics, enterprise 
in trade, magnificence in wealth, splendor in cer- 
emonies, petulance and projects in youth. The 
young men have a rude health which runs into 
peccant humors. They drink brandy like water, 
cannot expend their quantities of waste strength 
on riding, hunting, swimming, and fencing, and 
run into absurd frolics with the gravity of the 
Eumenides. They stoutly carry into every nook 
and corner of the earth their turbulent sense ; 
leaving no lie uncontradicted ; no pretension un- 
examined. They chew hasheesh ; cut themselves 
with poisoned creases ; swing their hammock in the 
boughs of the Bohon Upas ; taste every poison ; 
buy every secret ; at Naples, they put St. Janua- 
rius's blood in an alembic ; they saw a hole into 
the head of the " winking Virgin," to know why 
she winks ; measure with an English footrule every 
cell of the Inquisition, every Turkish caaba, every 
Holy of holies ; translate and send to Bentley the 
arcanum bribed and bullied away from shuddering 
Bramins ; and measure their own strength by the 



136 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

terror they cause. These travellers are of every 
class, the best and the worst ; and it may easily hap- 
pen that those of rudest behavior are taken notice 
of and remembered. The Saxon melancholy in the 
vulgar rich and poor appears as gushes of ill-humor, 
■which every check exasperates into sarcasm and vi- 
tuperation. There are multitudes of rude young 
English who have the self-sufficiency and bluntness 
of their nation, and who, with their disdain of the 
rest of mankind, and with this indigestion and choler, 
have made the English traveller a proverb for un- 
comfortable and offensive manners. It was no bad 
description of the Briton generically, what was 
said two hundred years ago, of one particular Ox- 
ford scholar : " He was a very bold man, uttered 
any thing that came into his mind, not only among 
his companions, but in public coffee-houses, and 
would often speak his mind of particular persons 
then accidentally present, without examining the 
company he was in ; for which he was often repri- 
manded, and several times threatened to be kicked 
and beaten." 

The common Englishman is prone to forget a 
cardinal article in the bill of social rights, that 
every man has a right to his own ears. No man 
can claim to usurp more than a few cubic feet of 
the audibilities of a public room, or to put upon 



CHARACTER. IS? 

the company with the loud statement of his crotch- 
ets or personalities. 

But it is in the deep traits of race that the for- 
tunes of nations are written, and however derived, 
whether a happier tribe or mixture of tribes, the 
air, or what circumstance, that mixed for them the 
golden mean of temperament, — here exists the 
best stock in the world, broad-fronted, broad- 
bottomed, best for depth, range, and equability, 
men of aplomb and reserves, great range and many 
moods, strong instincts, yet apt for culture ; war- 
class as well as clerks ; earls and tradesmen ; wise 
minority, as well as foolish majority ; abysmal tem- 
perament, hiding wells of wrath, and glooms on 
which no sunshine settles ; alternated with a com- 
mon sense and humanity which hold them fast to 
every piece of cheerful duty ; making this tem- 
perament a sea to which all storms are superficial ; 
a race to which their fortunes flow, as if they 
alone had the elastic organization at once fine and 
robust enough for dominion ; as if the burly inex- 
pressive, now mute and contumacious, now fierce 
and sharp-tongued dragon, which once made the 
island light with his fiery breath, had bequeathed 
his ferocity to his conqueror. They hide virtues 
under vices, or the semblance of them. It is the 
misshapen hairy Scandinavian troll again, who 
12* 



138 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

lifts the cart out of the mire, or " threshes the 
corn that ten day-laborers could not end," but it 
is done in the dark, and with muttered maledic- 
tions. He is a churl with a soft place in his heart, 
whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who 
loves to help you at a pinch. He says no, and 
serves you, and your thanks disgust him. Here 
was lately a cross-grained miser, odd and ugly, re- 
sembling in countenance the portrait of Punch, 
with the laugh left out ; rich by his own industry ; 
sulking in a lonely house ; who never gave a dinner 
to any man, and disdained all courtesies ; yet as true 
a worshipper of beauty in form and color as ever 
existed, and profusely pouring over the cold mind 
of his countrymen creations of grace and truth, re- 
moving the reproach of sterility from English art, 
catching from their savage climate every fine hint, 
and importing into their galleries every tint and trait 
of sunnier cities and skies ; making an era in paint- 
ing ; and, when he saw that the splendor of one of 
his pictures in the Exhibition dimmed his rival's 
that hung next it, secretly took a brush and black- 
ened his own. 

They do not wear their heart in their sleeve for 
daws to peck at. They have that phlegm or staid- 
ness, which it is a compliment to disturb. " Great 
men/' said Aristotle, " are always of a nature 



CHARACTER. 13> 

originally melancholy." 'Tis the habit of a mind 
which attaches to abstractions with a passion which 
gives vast results. They dare to displease, they 
do not speak to expectation. They like the sayers 
of No, better than the sayers of Yes. Each of 
them has an opinion which he feels it becomes him 
to express all the more that it differs from yours. 
They are meditating opposition. This gravity is 
inseparable from minds of great resources. 

There is an English hero superior to the French, 
the German, the Italian, or the Greek. "When he 
is brought to the strife with fate, he sacrifices a 
richer material possession, and on more purely 
metaphysical grounds. He is there with his own 
consent, face to face with fortune, which he defies. 
On deliberate choice, and from grounds of character, 
he has elected his part to live and die for, and dies 
with grandeur. This race has added new elements 
to humanity, and has a deeper root in the world. 

They have great range of scale, from ferocity to 
exquisite refinement. With larger scale, they 
have great retrieving power. After running each 
tendency to an extreme, they try another tack with 
equal heat. More intellectual than other races, when 
they live with other races, they do not take their 
language, but bestow their own. They subsidize 
other nations, and are not subsidized. They pros- 



140 



ENGLISH TRAITS. 



elyte, and are not proselyted. They assimilate 
other races to themselves, and are not assimilated. 
The English did not calculate the conquest of 
the Indies. It fell to their character. So they 
administer in different parts of the world, the codes 
of every empire and race ; in Canada, old French 
law ; in the Mauritius, the Code Napoleon ; in the 
"West Indies, the edicts of the Spanish Cortes ; in 
the East Indies, the Laws of Menu ; in the Isle of 
Man, of the Scandinavian Thing ; at the Cape of 
Good Hope, of the old Netherlands ; and in the 
Ionian Islands, the Pandects of Justinian. 

They are very conscious of their advantageous 
position in history. England is the lawgiver, the 
patron, the instructor, the ally. Compare the tone 
of the French and of the English press : the 
first querulous, captious, sensitive about English 
opinion ; the English press is never timorous about 
French opinion, but arrogant and contemptuous. 

They are testy and headstrong through an ex- 
cess of will and bias ; churlish as men sometimes 
please to be who do not forget a debt, who ask no 
favors, and who will do what they like with their 
own. With education and intercourse, these asper- 
ities wear off, and leave the good will pure. If 
anatomy is reformed according to national tenden- 
cies, I suppose, the spleen will hereafter be found 



CHARACTER- 141 

in the Englishman, not found in the American, and 
differencing the one from the other. I anticipate 
another anatomical discovery, that this organ will 
be found to be cortical and caducous, that they are 
superficially morose, but at last tender-hearted, 
herein differing from Rome and the Latin nations. 
Nothing savage, nothing mean resides in the Eng- 
lish heart. They are subject to panics of credulity 
and of rage, but the temper of the nation, how- 
ever disturbed, settles itself soon and easily, as, in 
this temperate zone, the sky after whatever storms 
clears again, and serenity is its normal condition. 

A saving stupidity masks and protects their per- 
ception as the curtain of the eagle's eye. Our 
swifter Americans, when they first deal with Eng- 
lish, pronounce them stupid ; but, later, do them 
justice as people who wear well, or hide their 
strength. To understand the power of perform 
ance that is in their finest wits, in the patient 
Newton, or in the versatile transcendent poets, or 
in the Dugdales, Gibbons, Hallams, Eldons, and 
Peels, one should see how English day-laborers 
hold out. High and low, they are of an unctuous 
texture. There is an adipocere in their constitu- 
tion, as if they had oil also for their mental wheels, 
and could perform vast amounts of work without 
damaging themselves. 



142 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Even the scale of expense on which people live, 
and to which scholars and professional men con- 
form, proves the tension of their muscle, when vast 
numbers are found who can each lift this enormous 
load. I might even add, their daily feasts argue a 
savage vigor of body. 

No nation was ever so rich in able men ; " gen- 
tlemen," as Charles I. said of Strafford, " whose 
abilities might make a prince rather afraid than 
ashamed in the greatest affairs of state ; " men of 
such temper, that, like Baron Vere, " had one seen 
him returning from a victory, he would by his 
silence have suspected that he had lost the day ; 
and, had he beheld him in a retreat, he would have 
collected him a conqueror by the cheerfulness of 
his spirit." * 

The following passage from the Heimskringla 
might almost stand as a portrait of the mod- 
ern Englishman : — " Haldor was very stout and 
strong, and remarkably handsome in appearances. 
King Harold gave him this testimony, that he, 
among all his men, cared least about doubtful cir- 
cumstances, whether they betokened danger or 
pleasure ; for, whatever turned up, he was never in 
higher nor in lower spirits, never slept less nor 
more on account of them, nor ate nor diank but 

* Fuller. Worthies of England. 



CHARACTER. 143 

according to his custom. Haldor was not a man of 
many words, but short in conversation, told his opin- 
ion bluntly, and was obstinate and hard : and this 
could not please the king, who had many clever 
people about him, zealous in his service. Haldor 
remained a short time with the king, and then came 
to Iceland, where he took up his abode in Hiard- 
aholt, and dwelt in that farm to a very advanced 
age." * 

The national temper, in the civil history, is not 
flashy or whiffling. The slow, deep English mass 
smoulders with fire, which at last sets all its bor 
ders in flame. The wrath of London is not French 
wrath, but has a long memory, and, in its hottest 
heat, a register and rule. 

Half their strength they put not forth. They 
are capable of a sublime resolution, and if here- 
after the war of races, often predicted, and making 
itself a war of opinions also (a question of des- 
potism and liberty coming from Eastern Europe), 
should menace the English civilization, these sea- 
kings may take once again to their floating castles, 
and find a new home and a second millennium of 
power in their colonies. 

The stability of England is the security of the 
modern world. If the English race were as mu« 

* Heimskringla, Laing's translation, vol. iii. p. 37. 



144 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

table as the French, what reliance ? But the Eng- 
lish stand for liberty. The conservative, money- 
loving, lord-loving English are yet liberty-loving ; 
and so freedom is safe : for they have more per- 
sonal force than any other people. The nation 
always resist the immoral action of their govern- 
ment. They think humanely on the affairs of 
France, of Turkey, of Poland, of Hungary, of 
Schleswig Holstein, though overborne by the state- 
craft of the rulers at last. 

Does the early history of each tribe show the 
permanent bias, which, though not less potent, is 
masked, as the tribe spreads its activity into col- 
onies, commerce, codes, arts, letters ? The early 
history shows it, as the musician plays the air which 
he proceeds to conceal in a tempest of variations. 
In Alfred, in the Northmen, one may read the 
genius of the English society, namely, that private 
life is the place of honor. Glory, a career, and 
ambition, words familiar to the longitude of Paris, 
are seldom heard in English speech. Nelson wrote 
from their hearts his homely telegraph, " England 
expects every man to do his duty." 

For actual service, for the dignity of a profes- 
sion, or to appease diseased or inflamed talent, the 
army and navy may be entered (the worst boys 
doing well in the navy) ; and the civil service, in 



CHARACTER. 145 

departments where serious official work is done ; 
and they hold in esteem the barrister engaged in 
the severer studies of the law. But the calm, 
sound, and most British Briton shrinks from pub- 
lic life, as charlatanism, and respects an economy 
founded on agriculture, coal-mines, manufactures, 
or trade, which secures an independence through 
the creation of real values. 

They wish neither to command or obey, but to 
be kings in their own houses. They are intellec- 
tual and deeply enjoy literature ; they like well to 
have the world served up to them in books, maps, 
models, and every mode of exact information, and, 
though not creators in art, they value its refine- 
ment. They are ready for leisure, can direct and 
fill their own day, nor need so much as others the 
constraint of a necessity. But the history of the 
nation discloses, at every turn, this original predi- 
lection for private independence, and, however 
this inclination may have been disturbed by the 
bribes with which their vast colonial power has 
warped men out of orbit, the inclination endures, 
and forms and reforms the laws, letters, manners, 
and occupations. They choose that welfare which 
is compatible with the commonwealth, knowing that 
such alone is stable ; as wise merchants prefer in- 
vestments in the three per cents. 
13 



CHAPTER IX. 

COCKAYNE. 

The English are a nation of humorists. Indi- 
vidual right is pushed to the uttermost bound com- 
patible with public order. Property is so perfect, 
that it seems the craft of that race, and not to exist 
elsewhere. The king cannot step on an acre which 
the peasant refuses to sell. A testator endows a 
dog or a rookery, and Europe cannot interfere with 
his absurdity. Every individual has his particular 
way of living, which he pushes to folly, and the 
decided sympathy of his compatriots is engaged to 
back up Mr. Crump's whim by statutes, and chan- 
cellors, and horse-guards. There is no freak so 
ridiculous but some Englishman has attempted to 
immortalize by money and law. British citizen- 
ship is as omnipotent as Eoman was. Mr. Cock- 
ayne is very sensible of this. The pursy man means 
by freedom the right to do as he pleases, and does 
wrong in order to feel his freedom, and makes a 
conscience of persisting in it. 

(146) 



COCKAYNE. 147 

He is intensely patriotic, for his country is so 
small. His confidence in the power and perform- 
ance of his nation makes him provokingly incu 
rious about other nations. He dislikes foreigners. 
Swedenborg, who lived much in England, notes 
" the similitude of minds among the English, in 
consequence of which they contract familiarity 
with friends who are of that nation, and seldom 
with others : and they regard foreigners, as one 
looking through a telescope from the top of a pal- 
ace regards those who dwell or wander about out 
of the city." A much older traveller, the Vene- 
tian who wrote the " Relation of England," * in 
1500, says : — " The English are great lovers of 
themselves, and of every thing belonging to them. 
They think that there are no other men than them- 
selves, and no other world but England ; and, 
whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say 
that he looks like an Englishman, and it is a great 
pity he should not be an Englishman ; and when- 
ever they partake of any delicacy with a foreigner, 
they ask him whether such a thing is made in his 
country." When he adds epithets of praise, his cli- 
max is " so English ; " and when he wishes to pay 
you the highest compliment, he says, I should not 

* Printed by the Camden Society. 



148 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

know you from an Englishman. France is, by its nat- 
ural contrast, a kind of blackboard on which English 
character draws its own traits in chalk. This arro- 
gance habitually exhibits itself in allusions to the 
French. I suppose that all men of English blood 
in America, Europe, or Asia, have a secret feeling 
of joy that they are not French natives. Mr. Cole- 
ridge is said to have given public thanks to God, 
at the close of a lecture, that he had defended him 
from being able to utter a single sentence in the 
French language. I have found that Englishmen 
have such a good opinion of England, that the or- 
dinary phrases, in all good society, of postponing or 
disparaging one's own things in talking with a 
stranger, are seriously mistaken by them for an in- 
suppressible homage to the merits of their nation ; 
and the New Yorker or Pennsylvanian who mod- 
estly laments the disadvantage of a new country, 
log-huts, and savages, is surprised by the instant 
and unfeigned commiseration of the whole com- 
pany, who plainly account all the world out of 
England a heap of rubbish. 

The same insular limitation pinches his foreign 
politics. He sticks to his traditions and usages, 
and, so help him God ! he will force his island by- 
laws down the throat of great countries, like India, 
China, Canada, Australia, and not only so, but 



COCKAYNE. 145 

impose Wapping on the Congress of Vienna, and 
trample down all nationalities with his taxed boots. 
Lord Chatham goes for liberty, and no taxation 
without representation ; — for that is British law ; 
but not a hobnail shall they dare make in America, 
but buy their nails in England, — for that also is 
British law ; and the fact that British commerce 
was to be re-created by the independence of Amer- 
ica, took them all by surprise. 

In short, I am afraid that English nature is so 
rank and aggressive as to be a little incompatible 
with every other. The world is not wide enough 
for two. 

But, beyond this nationality, it must be admitted, 
the island offers a daily worship to the old Norse 
god Brage, celebrated among our Scandinavian 
forefathers, for his eloquence and majestic air. 
The English have a steady courage, that fits them 
for great attempts and endurance : they have also 
a petty courage, through which every man de- 
lights in showing himself for what he is, and in 
doing what he can ; so that, in all companies, 
each of them has too good an opinion of himself 
to imitate any body. He hides no defect of his 
form, features, dress, connection, or birthplace, for 
he thinks every circumstance belonging to him 
13* 



150 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

comes recommended to you. If one of them have 
a bald, or a red, or a green head, or bow legs, or a 
scar, or mark, or a paunch, or a squeaking or a 
raven voice, he has persuaded himself that there 
is something modish and becoming in it, and that 
it sits well on him. 

But nature makes nothing in vain, and this little 
superfluity of self-regard in the English brain, is 
one of the secrets of their power and history. 
For, it sets every man on being and doing what 
he really is and can. It takes away a dodging, 
skulking, secondary air, and encourages a frank 
and manly bearing, so that each man makes the 
most of himself, and loses no opportunity for want 
of pushing. A man's personal defects will com- 
monly have with the rest of the world, precisely 
that importance which they have to himself. If 
he makes light of them, so will other men. We 
all find in these a convenient meter of character, 
since a little man would be ruined by the vexation. 
I remember a shrewd politician, in one of our 
western cities, told me, " that he had known sev- 
eral successful statesmen made by their foible." 
And another, an ex-governor of Illinois, said to 
me, " If a man knew any thing, he would sit in a 
corner and be modest ; but he is such an ignorant 



COCKAYNE. 151 

peacock, that be goes bustling up and down, and 
hits on extraordinary discoveries. " 

There is also this benefit in brag, that the speak- 
er is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Hu- 
mor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold 
him to it. Their culture generally enables the 
travelled English to avoid any ridiculous extremes 
of this self-pleasing, and to give it an agreeable 
air. Then the natural disposition is fostered by 
the respect which they find entertained in the 
world for English ability. It was said of Louis 
XIV., that his gait and air were becoming enough 
in so great a monarch, yet would have been ridicu- 
lous in another man ; so the prestige of the Eng- 
lish name warrants a certain confident bearing, 
which a Frenchman or Belgian could not carry. 
At all events, they feel themselves at liberty to 
assume the most extraordinary tone on the subject 
of English merits. 

An English lady on the Rhine hearing a Ger- 
man speaking of her party as foreigners, exclaimed, 
ts No, we are not foreigners ; we are English ; it 
is you that are foreigners." They tell you daily, 
in London, the story of the Frenchman and Eng- 
lishman who quarrelled. Both were unwilling to 
fight, but their companions put them up to it : at 
last, it was agreed, that they should fight alone, in 



152 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

the dark, and with pistols : the candles were put 
out, and the Englishman, to make sure not to hit 
any body, fired up the chimney, and brought down 
the Frenchman. They have no curiosity about 
foreigners, and answer any information you may 
volunteer with " Oh, Oh ! " until the informant 
makes up his mind, that they shall die in their 
ignorance, for any help he will offer. There are 
really no limits to this conceit, though brighter men 
among them make painful efforts to be candid. 

The habit of brag runs through all classes, from 
the Times newspaper through politicians and poets, 
through Wordsworth, Carlyle, Mill, and Sydney 
Smith, down to the boys of Eton. In the gravest 
treatise on political economy, in a philosophical 
essay, in books of science, one is surprised by the 
most innocent exhibition of unflinching nationality. 
In a tract on Corn, a most amiable and accom- 
plished gentleman writes thus : — " Though Brit- 
ain, according to Bishop Berkeley's idea, were 
surrounded by a wall of brass ten thousand cubits 
in height, still she would as far excel the rest of 
the globe in riches, as she now does, both in this 
secondary quality, and in the more important ones 
of freedom, virtue, and science." * 

* William Spence. 



COCKAYNE. 153 

The English dislike the American structure of 
society, whilst yet trade, mills, public education, 
and chartism are doing what they can to create in 
England the same social condition. America is 
the paradise of the economists ; is the favorable 
exception invariably quoted to the rules of ruin ; 
but when he speaks directly of the Americans, 
the islander forgets his philosophy, and remembers 
his disparaging anecdotes. 

But this childish patriotism costs something, like 
all narrowness. The English sway of their colo- 
nies has no root of kindness. They govern by 
their arts and ability ; they are more just than 
kind ; and, whenever an abatement of their power 
is felt, they have not conciliated the affection on 
which to rely. 

Coarse local distinctions, as those of nation, 
province, or town, are useful in the absence of 
real ones ; but we must not insist on these acci- 
dental lines. Individual traits are always tri- 
umphing over national ones. There is no fence 
in metaphysics discriminating Greek, or English, 
or Spanish science. iEsop, and Montaigne, Cer- 
vantes, and Saadi are men of the world ; and to 
wave our own flag at the dinner table or in the 
University, is to carry the boisterous dulness of a 
fire-club into a polite circle. Nature and destiny 



154 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

are always on the watch for our follies. Nature 
trips us up when we strut ; and there are curious 
examples in history on this very point of national 
pride. 

George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in 
Ciiicia, was a low parasite, who got a lucrative 
contract to supply the army with bacon. A rogue 
and informer, he got rich, and was forced to run 
from justice. He saved his money, embraced 
Arianism, collected a library, and got promoted 
by a faction to the episcopal throne of Alexan- 
dria. "When Julian came, A. D. 361, George was 
dragged to prison ; the prison was burst open by 
the mob, and George was lynched, as he deserved. 
And this precious knave became, in good time, 
Saint George of England, patron of chivalry, em- 
blem of victory and civility, and the pride of the 
best blood of the modern world. 

Strange, that the solid truth-speaking Briton 
should derive from an impostor. Strange, that the 
New World should have no better luck, — that 
broad America must wear the name of a thief. 
Amerigo Yespucci, the pickledealer at Seville, 
who went out, in 1499, a subaltern with Hojecla, 
and whose highest naval rank was boatswain's 
mate in an expedition that never sailed, managed 
in this lying world to supplant Columbus, and 



COCKAYNE. 155 

baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name. 
Thus nobody can throw stones. We are equally 
badly off in our founders ; and the false pickle- 
dealer is an offset to the false bacon-seller. 



CHAPTER X. 

WEALTH. 

There is no country in which so absolute a hom- 
age is paid to wealth. In America, there is a 
touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences 
of large property, as if, after all, it needed apology. 
But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, 
and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic 
rules throughout all English souls ; — if you have 
merit, can you not show it by your good clothes, 
and coach, and horses ? How can a man be a 
gentleman without a pipe of wine ? Haydon says, 
" there is a fierce resolution to make every man 
live according to the means he possesses." There 
is a mixture of religion in it. They are under the 
Jewish law, and read with sonorous emphasis that 
their days shall be long in the land, they shall 
have sons and daughters, flocks and herds, Tvine 
and oil. In exact proportion, is the reproach of 
poverty. They do not wish to be represented 
except by opulent men. An Englishman who has 

(156) 









WEALTH. 157 

lost his fortune, is said to have died of a broken 
heart. The last term of insult is, "a beggar." 
Nelson said, " the want of fortune is a crime which 
I can never get over." Sydney Smith said, " pov- 
erty is infamous in England." And one of their 
recent writers speaks, in reference to a private 
and scholastic life, of " the grave moral deteriora- 
tion which follows an empty exchequer." You 
shall find this sentiment, if not so frankly put, yet 
deeply implied, in the novels and romances of the 
present century, and not only in these, but in biog- 
raphy, and in the votes of public assemblies, in 
the tone of the preaching, and in the table-talk. 

I was lately turning over "Wood's Athena Ox- 
onienses, and looking naturally for another stand- 
ard in a chronicle of the scholars of Oxford for 
two hundred years. But I found the two dis- 
graces in that, as in most English books, are, first, 
disloyalty to Church and State, and, second, to be 
born poor, or to come to poverty. A natural 
fruit of England is the brutal political economy. 
Malthus finds no cover laid at nature's table for 
the laborer's son. In 1809, the majority in Par- 
liament expressed itself by the language of Mr. 
Fuller in the House of Commons, "if you do 
not like the country, damn you, you can leave it." 
When Six S. Romilly proposed his bill forbidding 
14 



158 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

parish officers to bind children apprentices at a 
greater distance than forty miles from their home, 
Peel opposed, and Mr. Wortley said, "though, in 
the higher ranks, to cultivate family affections was a 
good thing, 'twas not so among the lower orders. 
Better take them away from those who might de- 
prave them. And it was highly injurious to trade 
to stop binding to manufacturers, as it must raise 
the price of labor, and of manufactured goods." 

The respect for truth of facts in England, is 
equalled only by the respect for wealth. It is at 
once the pride of art of the Saxon, as he is a 
wealth-maker, and his passion for independence. 
The Englishman believes that every man must take 
care of himself, and has himself to thank, if he do 
not mend his condition. To pay their debts is their 
national point of honor. From the Exchequer and 
the East India House to the huckster's shop, every 
thing prospers, because it is solvent. The British 
armies are solvent, and pay for what they take. 
The British empire is solvent ; for, in spite of the 
huge national debt, the valuation mounts. During 
the war from 1789 to 1815, whilst they complained 
that they were taxed within an inch of their lives, 
and, by dint of enormous taxes, were subsidizing 
all the continent against Erance, the English were 
growing rich every year faster than any people 



WEALTH. 159 

ever grew before. It is their maxim, that the 
weight of taxes must be calculated not by what is 
taken, but by what is left. Solvency is in the 
ideas and mechanism of an Englishman. The 
Crystal Palace is not considered honest until it 
P a y s t — i no matter how much convenience, beauty, 
or eclat, it must be self-supporting. They are 
contented with slower steamers, as long as they 
know that swifter boats lose money. They pro- 
ceed logically by the double method of labor and 
thrift. Every household exhibits an exact econ- 
omy, and nothing of that uncalculated headlong 
expenditure which families use in America. If 
they cannot pay, they do not buy ; for they have 
no presumption of better fortunes next year, as our 
people have ; and they say without shame, I cannot 
afford it. Gentlemen do not hesitate to ride 
in the second-class cars, or in the second cabin. 
An economist, or a man who can proportion his 
means and his ambition, or bring the year round 
with expenditure which expresses his character, 
without embarrassing one day of his future, is 
already a master of life, and a freeman. Lord 
Burleigh writes to his son, " that one ought never 
to devote more than two thirds of his income to 
the ordinary expenses of life, since the extraordi- 
nary will be certain to absorb the other third." 



1G0 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

The ambition to create value evokes every kind 
of ability, government becomes a manufacturing 
corporation, and every house a mill. The headlong 
bias to utility will let no talent lie in a napkin, — if 
possible, will teach spiders to weave silk stockings. 
An Englishman, while he eats and drinks no more, 
or not much more than another man, labors three 
times as many hours in the course of a year, as 
any other European ; or, his life as a workman is 
three lives. He works fast. Every thing in Eng- 
land is at a quick pace. They have reinforced 
their own productivity, by the creation of that 
marvellous machinery which differences this age 
from any other age. 

'Tis a curious chapter in modern history, the 
growth of the machine-shop. Six hundred years 
ago, Roger Bacon explained the precession of the 
equinoxes, the consequent necessity of the reform 
of the calendar ; measured the length of the year, 
invented gunpowder ; and announced, (as if look- 
ing from his lofty cell, over five centuries, into 
ours,) " that machines can be constructed to drive 
ships more rapidly than a whole galley of rowers 
could do ; nor would they need any thing but a 
pilot to steer them. Carriages also might be con- 
structed to move with an incredible speed, without 
the aid of any animal. Finally, it would not be 



WEALTH. 161 

impossible to make machines, which, by means of 
a suit of wings, should fly in the air in the manner 
of birds." But the secret slept with Bacon. The 
six hundred years have not yet fulfilled his words. 
Two centuries ago, the sawing of timber was done 
by hand ; the carriage wheels ran on wooden axles ; 
the land was tilled by wooden ploughs. And it 
was to little purpose, that they had pit-coal, or that 
looms were improved, unless Watt and Stephenson 
had taught them to work force-pumps and power- 
looms, by steam. The great strides were all taken 
within the last hundred years. The Life of Sir 
Robert Peel, who died, the other day, the model 
Englishman, very properly has, for a frontispiece, 
a drawing of the spinning-jenny, w T hich wove the 
web of his fortunes. Hargreaves invented the 
spinning-jenny, and died in a workhouse. Ark- 
wright improved the invention ; and the machine 
dispensed with the work of ninety-nine men : that 
is, one spinner could do as much work as one hun- 
dred had done before. The loom was improved 
further. But the men would sometimes strike for 
wages, and combine against the masters, and, about 
1829-30, much fear was felt, lest the trade would 
be drawn away by these interruptions, and the 
emigration of the spinners, to Belgium and the 
United States. Iron and steel are very obedient, 
14* 



162 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

"Whether it were not possible to make a spinner that 
would not rebel, nor mutter, nor scowl, nor strike 
for wages, nor emigrate ? At the solicitation of the 
masters, after a mob and riot at Staley Bridge, Mr. 
Roberts of Manchester undertook to create this 
peaceful fellow, instead of the quarrelsome fellow 
God had made. After a few trials, he succeeded, 
and, in 1830, procured a patent for his self-acting 
mule ; a creation, the delight of mill-owners, and 
" destined," they said, " to restore order among the 
industrious classes " ; a machine requiring only a 
child's hand to piece the broken yarns. As Ark- 
wrlght had destroyed domestic spinning, so Roberts 
destroyed the factory spinner. The power of ma- 
chinery in Great Britain, in mills, has been com- 
puted to be equal to 600,000,000 men, one man 
being able by the aid of steam to do the work 
which required two hundred and fifty men to 
accomplish fifty years ago. The production has 
been commensurate. England already had this 
laborious race, rich soil, water, wood, coal, iron, 
and favorable climate. Eight hundred years ago, 
commerce had made it rich, and it was recorded, 
"England is the richest of all the northern na- 
tions." The Norman historians recite, that "in 
1067, "William carried with him into Normandy, 
from England, more gold and silver than had ever 



WEALTH. 163 

before been seen in Gaul." But when, to this labor 
and trade, and these native resources was added 
this goblin of steam, with his myriad arms, never 
tired, working night and day everlastingly, the 
amassing of property has run out of all figures. 
It makes the motor of the last ninety years. The 
steampipe has added to her population and 
wealth the equivalent of four or five Englands. 
Forty thousand ships are entered in Lloyd's lists. 
The yield of wheat has gone on from 2,000,000 
quarters in the time of the Stuarts, to 13,000,000 
in 1854. A thousand million of pounds sterling 
are said to compose the floating money of com- 
merce. In 1848, Lord John Russell stated that the 
people of this country had laid out £300,000,000 
of capital in railways, in the last four years. But 
a better measure than these sounding figures, is 
the estimate, that there is wealth enough in Eng- 
land to support the entire population in idleness 
for one year. 

The wise, versatile, all-giving machinery makes 
chisels, roads, locomotives, telegraphs. Whitworth 
divides a bar to a millionth of an inch. Steam 
twines huge cannon into wreaths, as easily as it 
braids straw, and vies with the volcanic forces 
which twisted the strata. It can clothe shingle 
mountains with ship-oaks, make sword-blades that 



164 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

will cut gun-barrels in two. In Egypt, it can plant 
forests, and bring rain after three thousand years. 
Already it is ruddering the balloon, and the next 
war will be fought in the air. But another machine 
more potent in England than steam, is the Bank. 
It votes an issue of bills, population is stimulated, 
and cities rise ; it refuses loans, and emigration 
empties the country ; trade sinks ; revolutions break 
out ; kings are dethroned. By these new agents 
our social system is moulded. By dint of steam and 
of money, war and commerce are changed. Na- 
tions have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic 
tie does not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, 
we go and live where we will. Steam has enabled 
men to choose what law they will live under. 
Money makes place for them. The* telegraph is 
a limp-band that will hold the Fenris-wolf of war. 
For now, that a telegraph line runs through France 
and Europe, from London, every message it 
transmits makes stronger by one thread, the band 
which war will have to cut. 

The introduction of these elements gives new 
resources to existing proprietors. A sporting duke 
may fancy that the state depends on the House 
of Lords, but the engineer sees, that every stroke 
of the steam-piston gives value to the duke's land, 
fills it with tenants; doubles, quadruples, cen- 






WEALTH. 165 

tuples the duke's capital, and creates new measures 
and new necessities for the culture of his children. 
Of course, it draws the nobility into the competi- 
tion as stockholders in the mine, the canal, the 
railway, in the application of steam to agriculture, 
and sometimes into trade. But it also introduces 
large classes into the same competition; the old 
energy of the Norse race arms itself with these 
magnificent powers ; new men prove an overmatch 
for the land-owner, and the mill buys out the castle. 
Scandinavian Thor, who once forged his bolts in 
icy Hecla, and built galleys by lonely fiords ; in 
England, has advanced with the times, has shorn 
his beard, enters Parliament, sits down at a desk in 
the India House, and lends Miollnir to Birming- 
ham for a steam-hammer. 

The creation of w r ealth in England in the last 
ninety years, is a main fact in modern history. 
The wealth of London determines prices all over 
the globe. All things precious, or useful, or 
amusing, or intoxicating, are sucked into this com- 
merce and floated to London. Some English pri- 
vate fortunes reach, and some exceed a million of 
dollars a year. A hundred thousand palaces adorn 
the island. All that can feed the senses and pas- 
sions, all that can succor the talent, or arm the 
hands of the intelligent middle class > who never 



166 



ENGLISH TRAITS. 



spare in what they buy for their own consumption 
all that can aid science, gratify taste, or soothe 
comfort, is in open market. Whatever is excellent 
and beautiful in civil, rural, or ecclesiastic archi- 
tecture ; in fountain, garden, or grounds ; the 
English noble crosses sea and land to see and to 
copy at home. The taste and science of thirty 
peaceful generations ; the gardens which Evelyn 
planted ; the temples and pleasure-houses which 
Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren built ; the wood 
that Gibbons carved ; the taste of foreign and do- 
mestic artists, Shenstone, Pope, Brown, Loudon, 
Paxton, are in the vast auction, and the hereditary 
principle heaps on the owner of to-day the benefit 
of ages of owners. The present possessors are to 
the full as absolute as any of their fathers, in choos- 
ing and procuring what they like. This comfort 
and splendor, the breadth of lake and mountain, 
tillage, pasture, and park, sumptuous castle and 
modern villa, — all consist with perfect order. 
They have no revolutions ; no horse-guards dictat- 
ing to the crown ; no Parisian poissardes and bar- 
ricades ; no mob : but drowsy habitude, daily 
dress- dinners, wine, and ale, and beer, and gin, 
and sleep. 

With this power of creation, and this passion for 
independence, property has reached an ideal per- 



WEALTH. 167 

fection. It is felt and treated as the national 
life-blood. The laws are framed to give property 
the securest possible basis, and the provisions 
to lock and transmit it have exercised the cun- 
ningest heads in a profession which never ad- 
mits a fool. The rights of property nothing but 
felony and treason can override. The house is a 
castle which the king cannot enter. The Bank is 
a strong box to which the king has no key. What- 
ever surly sweetness possession can give, is tasted 
in England to the dregs. Vested rights are awful 
things, and absolute possession gives the smallest 
freeholder identity of interest with the duke. 
High stone fences, and padlocked garden-gates an- 
nounce the absolute will of the owner to be alone. 
Every whim of exaggerated egotism is put into 
stone and iron, into silver and gold, with costly 
deliberation and detail. 

An Englishman hears that the Queen Dowager 
washes to establish some claim to put her park 
paling a rod forward into his grounds, so as to get 
a coachway, and save her a mile to the avenue. 
Instantly he transforms his paling into stone-ma- 
sonry, solid as the walls of Cuma, and all Europe 
cannot prevail on him to sell or compound for an 
inch of the land. They delight in a freak as the 
proof of their sovereign freedom. Sir Edward 



168 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Boynton, at Spic Park, at Cadenham, on a preci- 
pice of incomparable prospect, built a house like a 
long barn, which had not a window on the prospect 
side. Strawberry Hill of Horace Walpole, Font- 
hill Abbey of Mr. Beckford, were freaks; and 
ISewstead Abbey became one in the hands of Lord 
Byron. 

But the proudest result of this creation has been 
the great and refined forces it has put at the dis- 
posal of the private citizen. In the social world, an 
Englishman to-day has the best lot. He is a king 
in a plain coat. He goes with the most powerful 
protection, keeps the best company, is armed by 
the best education, is seconded by wealth ; and his 
English name and accidents are like a flourish 
of trumpets announcing him. This, with his quiet 
style of manners, gives him the power of a sov- 
ereign, without the inconveniences which belong 
to that rank. I much prefer the condition of an 
English gentleman of the better class, to that of 
any potentate in Europe, — whether for travel, or 
for opportunity of society, or for access to means 
of science or study, or for mere comfort and easy 
healthy relation to people at home. 

Such as we have seen is the wealth of England, 
a mighty mass, and made good in whatever details 
we care to explore. The cause and spring of it is 



WEALTH. 169 

the wealth of temperament in the people. The 
wonder of Britain is this plenteous nature. Her 
worthies are ever surrounded by as good men as 
themselves ; each is a captain a hundred strong, 
and that wealth of men is represented again in the 
faculty of each individual, — that he has waste 
strength, power to spare. The English are so rich, 
and seem to have established a tap-root in the bow- 
els of the planet, because they are constitutionally 
fertile and creative. 

But a man must keep an eye on his servants, 
if he would not have them rule him. Man is a 
shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a 
new machine from his own structure, adapting some 
secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and 
leather, to some required function in the work of 
the world. But it is found that the machine un- 
mans the user. What he gains in making cloth, 
he loses in general power. There should be tem- 
perance in making cloth, as well as in eating. A 
man should not be a silk- worm ; nor a nation a 
tent of caterpillars. The robust rural Saxon de- 
generates in the mills to the Leicester stockinger, 
to the imbecile Manchester spinner, — far on the 
way to be spiders and needles. The incessant rep- 
etition of the same hand- work dwarfs the man, 
robs him of his strength, wit, and versatility, to 
15 



170 ENGLISH TKAITS. 

make a pin-polisher, a buckle-maker, or any other 
specialty ; and presently, in a change of industry, 
whole towns are sacrificed like ant-hills, when the 
fashion of shoe-string's supersedes buckles, when 
cotton takes the place of linen, or railways of turn- 
pikes, or when commons are inclosed by landlords. 
Then society is admonished of the mischief of the 
division of labor, and that the best political econo- 
my is care and culture of men ; for, in these crises, 
all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, 
capable of thought, and of new choice and the ap- 
plication of their talent to new labor. Then again 
come in new calamities. England is aghast at the 
disclosure of her fraud in the adulteration of food, 
of drugs, and of almost every fabric in her mills 
and shops ; finding that milk will not nourish, nor 
sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor pepper bite the 
tongue, nor glue stick. In true England all is 
false and forged. This too is the reaction of ma- 
chinery, but of the larger machinery of commerce. 
'Tis not, I suppose, want of probity, so much as 
the tyranny of trade, which necessitates a perpet- 
ual competition of underselling, and that again a 
perpetual deterioration of the fabric. 

The machinery has proved, like the balloon, un- 
manageable, and flies away with the aeronaut. 
Steam, from the first, hissed and screamed to warn 



WEALTH. 171 

him ; it was dreadful with its explosion, and crushed 
the engineer. The machinist has wrought and 
watched, engineers and firemen without number 
have been sacrificed in learning to tame and guide 
the monster. But harder still it has proved to 
resist and rule the dragon Money, with his paper 
wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, 
and Robinson, and their Parliaments, and their 
whole generation, adopted false principles, and went 
to their graves in the belief that they were enriching 
the country which they were impoverishing. They 
congratulated each other on ruinous expedients. 
It is rare to find a merchant who knows why a 
crisis occurs in trade, why prices rise or fall, or 
who knows the mischief of paper money. In the 
culmination of national prosperity, in the annexa- 
tion of countries ; building of ships, depots, towns ; 
in the influx of tons of gold and silver ; amid the 
chuckle of chancellors and financiers, it was found 
that bread rose to famine prices, that the yeoman 
was forced to sell his cow and pig, his tools, and 
his acre of land ; and the dreadful barometer of 
the poor-rates was touching the point of ruin. 
The poor-rate was sucking in the solvent classes, 
and forcing an exodus of farmers and mechanics 
What befals from the violence of financial crises, 
befals daily in the violence of artificial legislation. 



172 ENGLISH TRAITS. 



Such a wealth has England earned, ever new, 
bounteous, and augmenting. But the question re- 
curs, does she take the step beyond, namely, to the 
wise use, in view of the supreme wealth of na- 
tions ? We estimate the wisdom of nations by 
seeing what they did with their surplus capital. 
And, in view of these injuries, some compensation 
has been attempted in England. A part of the 
money earned returns to the brain to buy schools, 
libraries, bishops, astronomers, chemists, and artists 
with ; and a part to repair the wrongs of this in- 
temperate weaving, by hospitals, savings-banks, 
Mechanics' Institutes, public grounds, and other 
charities and amenities. But the antidotes are 
frightfully inadequate, and the evil requires a 
deeper cure, which time and a simpler social organ- 
ization must supply. At present, she does not rule 
her wealth. She is simply a good England, but no 
divinity, or wise and instructed soul. She too is 
in the stream of fate, one victim more in a common 
catastrophe. 

But being in the fault, she has the misfortune 
of greatness to be held as the chief offender. Eng- 
land must be held responsible for the despotism of 
expense. Her prosperity, the splendor which sc 



WEALTH. 173 

much manhood and talent and perseverance has 
thrown upon vulgar aims, is the very argument of 
materialism. Her success strengthens the hands 
of base wealth. Who can propose to youth pov- 
erty and wisdom, when mean gain has arrived at 
the conquest of letters and arts ; when English 
success has grown out of the very renunciation of 
principles, and the dedication to outsides ? A 
civility of trifles, of money and expense, an eru- 
dition of sensation takes place, and the putting as 
many impediments as we can, between the man 
and his objects. Hardly the bravest among them 
have the manliness to resist it successfully. Hence, 
it has come, that not the aims of a manly life, but 
the means of meeting a certain ponderous expense, 
is that which is to be considered by a youth in 
England, emerging from his minority. A large 
family is reckoned a misfortune. And it is a con- 
solation in the death of the young, that a source 
of expense is closed. 
15* 



CHAPTER XI. 

ARISTOCRACY. 

The feudal character of the English state, now 
that it is getting obsolete, glares a little, in con- 
trast with the democratic tendencies. The inequal- 
ity of power and property shocks republican nerves. 
Palaces, halls, villas, walled parks, all over Eng- 
land, rival the splendor of royal seats. Many of 
the halls, like Haddon, or Kedleston, are beautiful 
desolations. The proprietor never saw them, or 
never lived in them. Primogeniture built these 
sumptuous piles, and, I suppose, it is the senti- 
ment of every traveller, as it was mine, 'Twas 
well to come ere these were gone. Primogeniture 
is a cardinal rule of English property and institu- 
tions. Laws, customs, manners, the very persons 
and faces, affirm it. 

The frame of society is aristocratic, the taste 
of the people is loyal. The estates, names, 
and manners of the nobles natter the fancy of 
the people, and conciliate the necessary support 

(174) 



ARISTOCRACY. 175 

In spite of broken faith, stolen charters, and 
the devastation of society by the profligacy of the 
court, we take sides as we read for the loyal Eng- 
land and King Charles's " return to his right " with 
his Cavaliers, — knowing what a heartless trifler 
he is, and what a crew of God-forsaken robbers 
they are. The people of England knew as much. 
But the fair idea of a settled government connect- 
ing itself with heraldic names, with the written 
and oral history of Europe, and, at last, with the 
Hebrew religion, and the oldest traditions of the 
world, was too pleasing a vision to be shattered by 
a few offensive realities, and the politics of shoe- 
makers and costermongers. The hopes of the 
commoners take the same direction with the inter- 
est of the patricians. Every man who becomes 
rich buys land, and does what he can to fortify the 
nobility, into which he hopes to rise. The Angli- 
can clergy are identified with the aristocracy. 
Time and law have made the joining and mould- 
ing perfect in every part. The Cathedrals, the 
Universities, the national music, the popular ro- 
mances, conspire to uphold the heraldry, which 
the current politics of the day are sapping. The 
taste of the people is conservative. They are 
proud of the castles, and of the language and sym- 
bol of chivalry. Even the word lord is the luck- 



176 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

iest style that is used in any language to designate 
a patrician. The superior education and manners 
of the nobles recommend them to the country. 

The Norwegian pirate got what he could, and 
held it for his eldest son. The Norman noble, 
who was the Norwegian pirate baptized, did like- 
wise. There was this advantage of western over 
oriental nobility, that this was recruited from be- 
low. English history is aristocracy with the doors 
open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come 
in. Of course, the terms of admission to this club 
are hard and high. The selfishness of the nobles 
come3 in aid of the interest of the nation to re- 
quire signal merit. Piracy and war gave place to 
trade, politics, and letters ; the war-lord to the law- 
lord ; the law -lord to the merchant and the mill- 
owner ; but the privilege was kept, whilst the 
means of obtaining it were changed. 

The foundations of these families lie deep in 
Norwegian exploits by sea, and Saxon sturdiness 
on land. All nobility in its beginnings was some- 
body's natural superiority. The things these 
English have done were not done without peril of 
life, nor without wisdom and conduct ; and the 
first hands, it may be presumed, were often chal- 
lenged to show their right to their honors, or yield 
them to better men. " He that will be a head a 



ARISTOCRACY. 177 

let him be a bridge," said the Welsh chief Bene- 
gridran, when he carried all his men over the 
river on his back. " He shall have the book/' 
said the mother of Alfred, " who can read it ; " 
and Alfred won it by that title : and I make no 
doubt that feudal tenure was no sinecure, but 
baron, knight, and tenant, often had their memo- 
ries refreshed, in regard to the service by which 
they held their lands. The De Veres, Bohuns, 
Mowbrays, and Plantagenets were not addicted to 
contemplation. The middle age adorned itself 
with proofs of manhood and devotion. Of Rich- 
ard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, the Emperor 
told Henry V. that no Christian king had such 
another knight for wisdom, nurture, and manhood, 
and caused him to be named, " Father of curtesie." 
" Our success in France," says the historian, " lived 
and died with him." * 

The war-lord earned his honors, and no donation 
of land was large, as long as it brought the duty 
of protecting it, hour by hour, against a terrible 
enemy. In France and in England, the nobles 
were, down to a late day, born and bred to war : 
and the duel, which in peace still held them to the 
risks of war, diminished the envy that, in trading 

* Fuller's Worthies. II. p. 472. 



178 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

and studious nations, would else have pried into 
their title. They were looked on as men who 
played high for a great stake. 

Great estates are not sinecures, if they are to be 
kept great. A creative economy is the fuel of 
magnificence. In the same line of Warwick, the 
successor next but one to Beauchamp, was the 
stout earl of Henry VI. and Edward IV. Few 
esteemed themselves in the mode, whose heads 
were not adorned with the black ragged staff, his 
badge. At his house in London, six oxen were 
daily eaten at a breakfast ; and every tavern was 
full of his meat ; and who had any acquaintance 
in his family, should have as much boiled and 
roast as he could carry on a long dagger. 

The new age brings new qualities into request, 
the virtues of pirates gave way to those of plant- 
ers, merchants, senators, and scholars. Comity, 
social talent, and fine manners, no doubt, have had 
their part also. I have met somewhere with a his- 
toriette, which, whether more or less true in its 
particulars, carries a general truth. " How came 
the Duke of Bedford by his great landed estates ? 
His ancestor having travelled on the continent, a 
lively, pleasant man, became the companion of a 
foreign prince wrecked on the Dorsetshire coast, 
where Mr. Russell lived. The prince recommend- 



ARISTOCRACY. 179 

ed him to Henry VIII., who, liking his company, 
gave him a large share of the plundered church 
lands." 

The pretence is that the noble is of unbroken 
descent from the Norman, and has never worked 
for eight hundred years. But the fact is otherwise. 
Where is Bohun ? where is De Vere ? The law- 
yer, the farmer, the silkmercer lies perdu under 
the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say 
nothing ; especially skilful lawyers, nobody's sons, 
who did some piece of work at a nice moment for 
government, and were rewarded with ermine. 

The national tastes of the English do not lead 
them to the life of the courtier, but to secure the 
comfort and independence of their homes. The 
aristocracy are marked by their predilection for 
country-life. They are called the county-families. 
They have often no residence in London, and only 
go thither a short time, during the season, to see 
the opera ; but they concentrate the love and labor 
of many generations on the building, planting and 
decoration of their homesteads. Some of them 
are too old and too proud to wear titles, or, as 
Sheridan said of Coke, " disdain to hide their head 
in a coronet ; " and some curious examples are 
cited to show the stability of English families. 
Their proverb is, that, fifty miles from London, a 



180 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

family will last a hundred years ; at a hundred 
miles, two hundred years ; and so on ; but I doubt 
that steam, the enemy of time, as well as of space, 
will disturb these ancient rules. Sir Henry "YVot- 
ton says of the first Duke of Buckingham, " He 
was born at Brookeby in Leicestershire, where 
his ancestors had chiefly continued about the space 
of four hundred years, rather without obscurity, 
than with any great lustre." * "Wraxall says, that, 
in 1781, Lord Surrey, afterwards Duke of Nor- 
folk, told him, that when the year 1783 should 
arrive, he meant to give a grand festival to all the 
descendants of the body of Jockey of Norfolk, to 
mark the day when the dukedom should have re- 
mained three hundred years in their house, since its 
creation by Richard III. Pepys tells us, in writing 
of an Earl Oxford, in 1666, that the honor had now 
remained in that name and blood six hundred years. 

This long descent of families and this cleaving 
through ages to the same spot of ground captivates 
the imagination. It has too a connection with the 
names of the towns and districts of the country. 

The names are excellent, — an atmosphere of 
legendary melody spread over the land. Older 
than all epics and histories, which clothe a nation^ 

* Reliquiae Wottonianae, p. 208. 



ARISTOCRACY. 181 

this undershirt sits close to the body. What his- 
tory too, and what stores of primitive and savage 
observation it infolds ! Cambridge is the bridge 
of the Cam ; Sheffield the field of the river Sheaf ; 
Leicester the castra or camp of the Lear or Leir 
(now Soar) ; Rochdale, of the Roch ; Exeter or 
Excester, the castra of the Ex ; Exmouth, Dart- 
mouth, Sidmouth, Teignmouth, the mouths of the 
Ex, Dart, Sid, and Teign rivers. Waltham is 
strong town ; RadclifFe is red cliff ; and so on : — 
a sincerity and use in naming very striking to 
an American, whose country is whitewashed all 
over by unmeaning names, the cast-off clothes of 
the country from which its emigrants came ; or, 
named at a pinch from a psalm-tune. But the 
English are those " barbarians " of Jamblichus, 
who " are stable in their manners, and firmly con 
tinue to employ the same words, which also are 
dear to the gods." 

'Tis an old sneer, that the Irish peerage drew 
their names from playbooks. The English lords 
do not call their lands after their own names, but 
call themselves after their lands ; as if the man 
represented the country that bred him ; and they 
rightly wear the token of the glebe that gave them 
birth ; suggesting that the tie is not cut, but that 
there in London, — the crags of Argyle, the kail 
16 



182 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

of Cornwall, the downs of Devon, the iron of 
Wales, the clays of Stafford, are neither forgetting 
nor forgotten, but know the man who was born 
by them, and who, like the long line of his fa- 
thers, has carried that crag, that shore, dsle, 
fen, or woodland, in his blood and manners. It 
has, too, the advantage of suggesting responsi- 
bleness. A susceptible man could not wear a 
name which represented in a strict sense a city or 
a county of England, without hearing in it a chal- 
lenge to duty and honor. 

The predilection of the patricians for residence 
in the country, combined with the degree of lib- 
erty possessed by the peasant, makes the safety of 
the English hall. Mirabeau wrote prophetically 
from England, in 1784, " If revolution break out 
in France, I tremble for the aristocracy : their 
chateaux will be reduced to ashes, and their blood 
spilt in torrents. The English tenant would de- 
fend his lord to the last extremity." The English 
go to their estates for grandeur. The French live 
at court, and exile themselves to their estates for 
economy. As they do not mean to live with their 
tenants, they do not conciliate them, but wring 
from them the last sous. Evelyn writes from 
Blois, in 1644, " The wolves are here in such 
numbers, that they often come and take children 



ARISTOCRACY. 183 

out of the streets : yet will not the Duke, who ia 
sovereign here, permit them to be destroyed." 

In evidence of the wealth amassed by ancient 
families, the traveller is shown the palaces in Pic- 
cadilly, Burlington House, Devonshire House, Lans- 
downe House in Berkshire Square, and, lower 
down in the city, a few noble houses which still 
withstand in all their amplitude the encroachment 
of streets. The Duke of Bedford includes or in- 
cluded a mile square in the heart of London, 
where the British Museum, once Montague House, 
now stands, and the land occupied by Woburn 
Square, Bedford Square, Russell Square. The 
Marquis of Westminster built within a few years 
the series of squares called Belgravia. Stafford 
House is the noblest palace in London. North- 
umberland House holds its place by Charing Cross. 
Chesterfield House remains in Audley Street, 
Sion House and Holland House are in the suburbs. 
But most of the historical houses are masked or 
lost in the modern uses to which trade or charity 
has converted them. A multitude of town pal- 
aces contain inestimable galleries of art. 

In the country, the size of private estates is 
more impressive. From Barnard Castle I rode 
on the highway twenty-three miles from High 
Force, a fall of the Tees, towards Darlington, past 



184 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Raby Castle, through the estate of the Duke of 
Cleveland. The Marquis of Breadalbane rides out 
of his house a hundred miles in a straight line to 
the sea, on his own property. The Duke of 
Sutherland owns the county of Sutherland, stretch- 
ing across Scotland from sea to sea. The Duke 
of Devonshire, besides his other estates, owns 
96,000 acres in the County of Derby. The 
Duke of Richmond has 40,000 acres at Good- 
wood, and 300,000 at Gordon Castle. The 
Duke of Norfolk's park in Sussex is fifteen miles 
in circuit. An agriculturist bought lately the 
island of Lewes, in Hebrides, containing 500,000 
acres. The possessions of the Earl of Lonsdale 
gave him eight seats in Parliament. This is the 
Heptarchy again : and before the Reform of 1832, 
one hundred and fifty-four persons sent three hun- 
dred and seven members to Parliament. The 
borough-mongers governed England. 

These large domains are growing larger. The 
great estates are absorbing the small freeholds. 
In 1786, the soil of England was owned by 
250,000 corporations and proprietors ; and, in 
1822, by 32,000. These broad estates find room 
in this narrow island. All over England, scattered 
at short intervals among ship-yards, mills, mines, 
and forges, are the paradises of the nobles, where 



ARISTOCRACY. 185 

the livelong repose and refinement are heightened 
by the contrast with the roar of industry and 
necessity, out of which you have stepped aside. 



I was surprised to observe the very small at- 
tendance usually in the House of Lords. Out 
of 573 peers, on ordinary days, only twenty or 
thirty. Where are they ? I asked. " At home 
on their estates, devoured by ennui, or in the 
Alps, or up the Rhine, in the Harz Mountains, 
or in Egypt, or in India, on the Ghauts." But, 
with such interests at stake, how can these men 
afford to neglect them ? " O," replied my friend, 
" why should they work for themselves, when 
every man in England works for them, and will 
suffer before they come to harm ? " The hardest 
radical instantly uncovers, and changes his tone to 
a lord. It was remarked, on the 10th April, 1848, 
(the day of the Chartist demonstration,) that the 
upper classes were, for the first time, actively inter- 
esting themselves in their own defence, and men 
of rank were sworn special constables, with the rest. 
" Besides, why need they sit out the debate ? Has 
not the Duke of Wellington, at this moment, their 
proxies, — the proxies of fifty peers in his pocket, 
to vote for them, if there be an emergency ? " 
16* 



186 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

It is however true, that the existence of the 
House of Peers as a branch of the government 
entitles them to fill half the Cabinet ; and their 
weight of property and station give them a virtual 
nomination of the other half; whilst they have 
their share in the subordinate offices, as a school 
of training. This monopoly of political power has 
given them their intellectual and social eminence 
in Europe. A few law lords and a few political 
lords take the brunt of public business. In the 
army, the nobility fill a large part of the high 
commissions, and give to these a tone of expense 
and splendor, and also of exclusiveness. They 
have borne their full share of duty and danger in 
this service ; and there are few noble families 
which have not paid in some of their members, 
the debt of life or limb, in the sacrifices of the 
Russian war. For the rest, the nobility have the 
lead in matters of state, and of expense ; in ques- 
tions of taste, in social usages, in convivial and 
domestic hospitalities. In general, all that is re- 
quired of them is to sit securely, to preside at 
public meetings, to countenance charities, and to 
give the example of that decorum so dear to the 
British heart. 

If one asks, in the critical spirit of the day, 
what service this class have rendered ? — uses ap- 



ARISTOCRACY. 18? 

pear, or they would have perished long ago, 
Some of these are easily enumerated, others more 
subtle make a part of unconscious history. Their 
institution is one step in the progress of society. 
For a race yields a nobility in some form, how- 
ever we name the lords, as surely as it yields 
women. 

The English nobles are high-spirited, active, 
educated men, born to wealth and power, who 
have run through every country, and kept in 
every country the best company, have seen eveiy 
secret of art and nature, and, when men of any 
ability or ambition, have been consulted in the 
conduct of every important action. You cannot 
wield great agencies without lending yourself to 
them, and, when it happens that the spirit of the 
earl meets his rank and duties, we have the best 
examples of behavior. Power of any kind readily 
appears in the manners ; and beneficent power, le 
talent de Men faire, gives a majesty which cannot 
be concealed or resisted. 

These people seem to gain as much as they lose 
by their position. They survey society, as from 
the top of St. Paul's, and, if they never hear plain 
truth from men, they see the best of every thing, 
in every kind, and they see things so grouped and 
amassed as to infer easily the sum and genius, 



188 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

instead of tedious particularities. Their good be- 
havior deserves all its fame, and they have that 
simplicity, and that air of repose, which are the 
finest ornament of greatness. 

The upper classes have only birth, say the peo- 
ple here, and not thoughts. Yes, but they have 
manners, and, 'tis wonderful, how much talent 
runs into manners : — nowhere and never so much 
as in England. They have the sense of superior- 
ity, the absence of all the ambitious effort which 
disgusts in the aspiring classes, a pure tone of 
thought and feeling, and the power to command, 
among their other luxuries, the presence of the 
most accomplished men in their festive meetings. 

Loyalty is in the English a sub-religion. They 
wear the laws as ornaments, and walk by their 
faith in their painted May-Fair, as if among the 
forms of gods. The economist of 1855 who asks, 
of what use are the lords ? may learn of Franklin 
to ask, of what use is a baby ? They have been a 
social church proper to inspire sentiments mutually 
honoring the lover and the loved. Politeness is 
the ritual of society, as prayers are of the church ; 
a school of manners, and a gentle blessing to the 
age in which it grew. 'Tis a romance adorning 
English life with a larger horizon ; a midway 
heaven, fulfilling to their sense their fairy tales 



ARISTOCRACY. 189 

and poetry. This, just as far as the breeding of 
the nobleman really made him brave, handsome, 
accomplished, and great-hearted. 

On general grounds, whatever tends to form 
manners, or to finish men, has a great value. 
Every one who has tasted the delight of friend- 
ship, will respect every social guard which our 
manners can establish, tending to secure from the 
intrusion of frivolous and distasteful people. The 
jealousy of every class to guard itself, is a testi- 
mony to the reality they have found in life. When 
a man once knows that he has done justice to him- 
self, let him dismiss all terrors of aristocracy as 
superstitions, so far as he is concerned. He who 
keeps the door of a mine, whether of cobalt, or 
mercury, or nickel, or plumbago, securely knows 
that the world cannot do without him. Every 
body who is real is open and ready for that which 
is also real. 

Besides, these are they who make England that 
strongbox and museum it is ; who gather and 
protect works of art, dragged from amidst burning 
cities and revolutionary countries, and brought 
hither out of all the world. I look with respect 
at houses six, seven, eight hundred, or, like War- 
wick Castle, nine hundred years old. I pardoned 
high park-fences, when I saw, that, besides doei 



190 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

and pheasants, these have preserved Arundel 
marbles, Townley galleries, Howard and Spenserian 
libraries, Warwick and Portland vases, Saxon manu- 
scripts, monastic architectures, millennial trees, and 
breeds of cattle elsewhere extinct. In these manors, 
after the frenzy of war and destruction subsides a 
little, the antiquary finds the frailest Roman jar, or 
crumbling Egyptian mummy-case, without so much 
as a new layer of dust, keeping the series of history 
unbroken, and waiting for its interpreter, who is 
sure to arrive. These lords are the treasurers and 
librarians of mankind, engaged by their pride and 
wealth to this function. 

Yet there were other works for British dukes 
to do. George Loudon, Quintinye, Evelyn, had 
taught them to make gardens. Arthur Young, 
Bakewell, and Mechi, have made them agricultural. 
Scotland was a camp until the day of Culloden. 
The Dukes of Athol, Sutherland, Buccleugh, and 
the Marquis of Breadalbane have introduced the 
rape-culture, the sheep-farm, wheat, drainage, the 
plantation of forests, the artificial replenishment of 
lakes and ponds with fish, the renting of game-pr£- 
serves Against the cry of the old tenantry, and the 
sympathetic cry of the English press, they have 
rooted out and planted anew, and now six millions 
of people live, and live better on the same land 
that fed three millions. 



ARISTOCRACY. 191 

The English barons, in every period, have been 
brave and great, after the estimate and opinion of 
their times. The grand old halls scattered up and 
down in England, are dumb vouchers to the state 
and broad hospitality of their ancient lords. Shak- 
speare's portraits of good duke Humphrey, of War- 
wick, of Northumberland, of Talbot, were drawn 
in strict consonance with the traditions. A sketch 
of the Earl of Shrewsbury, from the pen of 
Queen Elizabeth's archbishop Parker ; * Lord Her- 
bert of Cherbury's autobiography ; the letters and 
essays of Sir Philip Sidney ; the anecdotes pre- 
served by the antiquaries Fuller and Collins ; some 
glimpses at the interiors of noble houses, which 
we owe to Pepys and Evelyn ; the details which 
Ben Jonson's masques (performed at Kenilworth, 
Althorpe, Belvoir, and other noble houses,) record 
or suggest ; down to Aubrey's passages of the life 
of Hobbes in the house of the Earl of Devon, are 
favorable pictures of a romantic style of manners. 
Penshurst still shines for us, and its Christmas 
revels, "where logs not burn, but men." At 
Wilton House, the " Arcadia " was written, amidst 
conversations with Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, a 
man of no vulgar mind, as his own poems declare 
him. I must hold Ludlow Castle an honest 

• Dibdin's Literary Reminiscences, vol. 1, xii. 



192 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

house, for which Milton's " Comus " was written, 
and the company nobly bred which peformed it 
with knowledge and sympathy. In the roll of 
nobles, are found poets, philosophers, chemists, 
astronomers, also men of solid virtues and of lofty 
sentiments ; often they have been the friends and 
patrons of genius and learning, and especially of 
the fine arts ; and at this moment, almost every 
great house has its sumptuous picture-gallery. 

Of course, there is another side to this gorgeous 
show. Every victory was the defeat of a party 
only less worthy. Castles are proud things, but 
'tis safest to be outside of them. War is a foul 
game, and yet war is not the worst part of aristo- 
cratic history. In later times, when the baron, 
educated only for war, with his brains paralyzed by 
his stomach, found himself idle at home, he grew 
fat and wanton, and a sorry brute. Grammont, 
Pepys, and Evelyn, show the kennels to which the 
king and court went in quest of pleasure. Pros- 
titutes taken from the theatres, were made duch- 
esses, their bastards dukes and earls. " The young 
men sat uppermost, the old serious lords were out of 
favor." The discourse that the king's companions 
had with him was " poor and frothy." No man 
who valued his head might do what these pot-com- 
panions familiarly did with the king. In logical 



ARISTOCRACY. 193 

sequence of these dignified revels, Pepys can tell 
the beggarly shifts to which the king was reduced, 
who could not find paper at his council table, and 
" no handkerchers " in his wardrobe, " and but 
three bands to his neck," and the linen-draper and 
the stationer were out of pocket, and refusing to 
trust him, and the baker will not bring bread any 
longer. Meantime, the English Channel was swept, 
and London threatened by the Dutch fleet, manned 
too by English sailors, who, having been cheated of 
their pay for years by the king, enlisted with the 
enemy. 

The Selwyn correspondence in the reign of 
George III., discloses a rottenness in the aristocracy, 
which threatened to decompose the state. The 
sycophancy and sale of votes and honor, for place 
and title ; lewdness, gaming, smuggling, bribery, 
and cheating ; the sneer at the childish indiscretion 
of quarrelling with ten thousand a year ; the want 
of ideas ; the splendor of the titles, and the apa- 
thy of the nation, are instructive, and make the 
reader pause and explore the firm bounds which 
confined these vices to a handful of rich men. In 
the reign of the Fourth George, things do not seem 
to have mended, and the rotten debauchee let down 
from a window by an inclined plane into his coach 
to take the air, was a scandal to Europe which the 
17 



194 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

ill fame of his queen and of his family did nothing 
to retrieve. 

Under the present reign, the perfect decorum of 
the Court is thought to have put a check on the 
gross vices of the aristocracy ; yet gaming, racing, 
drinking, and mistresses, bring them down, and 
the democrat can still gather scandals, if he will. 
Dismal anecdotes abound, verifying the gossip of 
the last generation of dukes served by bailiffs, with 
all their plate in pawn ; of great lords living by the 
showing of their houses ; and of an old man wheeled 
in his chair from room to room, whilst his cham- 
bers are exhibited to the visitor for money; of 
ruined dukes and earls living in exile for debt. The 
historic names of the Buckinghams, Beauforts, 
Marlboroughs, and Hertfords, have gained no new 
lustre, and now and then darker scandals break 
out, ominous as the new chapters added under the 
Orleans dynasty to the " Causes Celebres " in 
Prance. Even peers, who are men of worth and 
public spirit, are overtaken and embarrassed by 
their vast expense. The respectable Duke of Dev- 
onshire, willing to be the Mecsenas and Lucullus of 
his island, is reported to have said, that he cannot 
live at Chatsworth but one month in the year. 
Their many houses eat them up. They cannot sell 
them, because they are entailed. They will not let 



ARISTOCRACY. 195 

them, for pride's sake, but keep them empty, aired 3 
and the grounds mown and dressed, at a cost of 
four or five thousand pounds a year. The spending 
is for a great part in servants, in many houses 
exceeding a hundred. 

Most of them are only chargeable with idleness, 
which, because it squanders such vast power of 
benefit, has the mischief of crime. " They might 
be little Providences on earth," said my friend, 
"and they are, for the most part, jockeys and fops." 
Campbell says, "acquaintance with the nobility, 
I could never keep up. It requires a life of idle- 
ness, dressing, and attendance on their parties." 
I suppose, too, that a feeling of self-respect is driv- 
ing cultivated men out of this society, as if the 
noble were slow to receive the lessons of the times, 
and had not learned to disguise his pride of place. 
A man of wit, who is also one of the celebrities 
of wealth and fashion, confessed to his friend, that 
he could not enter their houses without being made 
to feel that they were great lords, and he a low 
plebeian. With the tribe of artistes, including the 
musical tribe, the patrician morgue keeps no terms, 
but excludes them. When Julia Grisi and Mario 
sang at the houses of the Duke of Wellington and 
other grandees, a cord was stretched between the 
singer and the company. 



196 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

When every noble was a soldier, they were care- 
fully bred to great personal prowess. The educa- 
tion of a soldier is a simpler affair than that of an 
earl in the nineteenth century. And this was very 
seriously pursued ; they were expert in every spe- 
cies of equitation, to the most dangerous practices, 
and this down to the accession of William of 
Orange. But graver men appear to have trained 
their sons for civil affairs. Elizabeth extended her 
thought to the future ; and Sir Philip Sidney in 
his letter to his brother, and Milton and Evelyn, 
gave plain and hearty counsel. Already too, the 
English noble and squire were preparing for the 
career of the country-gentleman, and his peaceable 
expense. They went from city to city, learning re- 
ceipts to make perfumes, sweet powders, pomanders, 
antidotes, gathering seeds, gems, coins, and divers 
curiosities, preparing for a private life thereafter, in 
which they should take pleasure in these recreations. 

All advantages given to absolve the young patri- 
cian from intellectual labor are of course mistaken. 
" In the university, noblemen are exempted from 
the public exercises for the degree, &c, by which 
they attain a degree called honorary. At the same 
time, the fees they have to pay for matriculation, 
and on all other occasions, are much higher."* 

* Huber. History of English Universities. 



ARISTOCRACY. 197 

Fuller records "the observation of foreigners, 
that Englishmen, by making their children gentle- 
men, before they are men, cause they are so seldom 
wise men." This cockering justifies Dr. Johnson's 
bitter apology for primogeniture, " that it makes 
but one fool in a family." 

The revolution in society has reached this class. 
The great powers of industrial art have no exclu- 
sion of name or blood. The tools of our time, 
namely, steam, ships, printing, money, and pop- 
ular education, belong to those who can handle 
them : and their effect has been, that advantages 
once confined to men of family, are now open to 
the whole middle class. The road that grandeur 
levels for his coach, toil can travel in his cart. 

This is more manifest every day, but I think it 
is true throughout English history. English his- 
tory, wisely read, is the vindication of the brain of 
that people. Here, at last, were climate and condi- 
tion friendly to the working faculty. Who now 
will work and dare, shall rule. This is the charter, 
or the chartism, which fogs, and seas, and raina 
proclaimed, — that intellect and personal force 
should make the law ; that industry and adminis-j 
trative talent should administer ; that work should 
wear the crown. I know that not this, but some- 
thing else is pretended. The fiction with which 
17* 



198 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

the noble and the bystander equally please them- 
selves is, that the former is of unbroken descent 
from the Norman, and so has never worked for 
eight hundred years. All the families are new, 
but the name is old, and they have made a cove- 
nant with their memories not to disturb it. But 
the analysis of the peerage and gentry shows 
the rapid decay and extinction of old families, the 
continual recruiting of these from new blood. 
The doors, though ostentatiously guarded, are really 
open, and hence the power of the bribe. All the 
barriers to rank only whet the thirst, and enhance 
the prize. " Now," said Nelson, when clearing 
for battle, " a peerage, or Westminster Abbey ! " 
16 I have no illusion left," said Sydney Smith, " but 
the Archbishop of Canterbury." "The lawyers," 
said Burke, " are only birds of passage in this 
House of Commons," and then added, with a new 
figure, " they have their best bower anchor in the 
House of Lords." 

Another stride that has been taken, appears in 
the perishing of heraldry. Whilst the privileges 
of nobility are passing to the middle class, the 
badge is discredited, and the titles of lordship are 
getting musty and cumbersome. I wonder that 
sensible men have not been already impatient of 
them. They belong, with wigs, powder, and 



ARISTOCRACY. 19S 

scarlet coats, to an earlier age, and may be advan- 
tageously consigned, with paint and tattoo, to the 
dignitaries of Australia and Polynesia. 

A multitude of English, educated at the univer- 
sities, bred into their society with manners, ability, 
and the gifts of fortune, are every day confronting 
the peers on a footing of equality, and outstripping 
them, as often, in the race of honor and influence. 
That cultivated class is large and ever enlarging. 
It is computed that, with titles and without, there 
are seventy thousand of these people coming and 
going in London, who make up what is called high 
society. They cannot shut their eyes to the fact 
that an untitled nobility possess all the power 
without the inconveniences that belong to rank, 
and the rich Englishman goes over the world at 
the present day, drawing more than all the advan- 
tages which the strongest of his kings could 
command. 



CHAPTEK XII. 

UNIVERSITIES. 

Of British universities, Cambridge has the most 
illustrious names on its list. At the present day, 
too, it has the advantage of Oxford, counting in its 
alumni a greater number of distinguished scholars. 
I regret that I had but a single day wherein to see 
King's College Chapel, the beautiful lawns and 
gardens of the colleges, and a few of its gownsmen. 

But I availed myself of some repeated invita- 
tions to Oxford, where I had introductions to Dr. 
Daubeny, Professor of Botany, and to the Eegius 
Professor of Divinity, as well as to a valued friend, 
a Fellow of Oriel, and went thither on the last day 
of March, 1848. I was the guest of my friend in 
Oriel, was housed close upon that college, and I 
lived on college hospitalities. 

My new friends showed me their cloisters, the 
Bodleian Library, the Kandolph Gallery, Merton 
Hall, and the rest. I saw several faithful, high- 
minded young men, some of them in the mood of 

(200) 



UNIVERSITIES. 201 

making sacrifices for peace of mind, — a topic, of 
course, on which I had no counsel to offer. Their 
affectionate and gregarious ways reminded me at 
once of the habits of our Cambridge men, though I 
imputed to these English an advantage in their secure 
and polished manners. The halls are rich with 
oaken wainscoting and ceiling. The pictures of 
the founders hang from the walls ; the tables glit- 
ter with plate. A youth came forward to the upper 
table, and pronounced the ancient form of grace 
before meals, which, I suppose, has been in use 
here for ages, Benedictus benedicat ; benedicitur, 
benedicatur. 

It is a curious proof of the English use and 
wont, or of their good nature, that these young 
men are locked up every night at nine o'clock, and 
the porter at each hall is required to give the name 
of any belated student who is admitted after that 
hour. Still more descriptive is the fact, that out 
of twelve hundred young men, comprising the 
most spirited of the aristocracy, a duel has never 
occurred. 

Oxford is old, even in England, and conserva- 
tive. Its foundations date from Alfred, and even 
from Arthur, if, as is alleged, the Pheryllt of the 
Druids had a seminary here. In the reign of Ed- 
ward L, it is pretended, here were thirty thousand 



€02 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

students ; and nineteen most noble foundations 
were then established. Chaucer found it as firm 
as if it had always stood ; and it is, in British story, 
rich with great names, the school of the island, 
and the link of England to the learned of Europe. 
Hither came Erasmus, with delight, in 1497. 
Albericus Gentilis, in 1580, was relieved and main- 
tained by the university. Albert Alaskie, a noble 
Polonian, Prince of Sirad, who visited England to 
admire the wisdom of Queen Elizabeth, was enter- 
tained with stage-plays in the Refectory of Christ- 
church, in 1583. Isaac Casaubon, coming from 
Henri Quatre of France, by invitation of James 
I., was admitted to Christ's College, in July, 1613. 
I saw the Ashmolean Museum, whither Elias Ash- 
mole, in 1682, sent twelve cart-loads of rarities. 
Here indeed was the Olympia of all Antony Wood's 
and Aubrey's games and heroes, and every inch of 
ground has its lustre. For Wood's Athence Ox~ 
onienses, or calendar of the writers of Oxford for 
two hundred years, is a lively record of English 
manners and merits, and as much a national mon- 
ument as Purchas's Pilgrims or Hansard's Regis- 
ter. On every side, Oxford is redolent of age and 
authority. Its gates shut of themselves against 
modern innovation. It is still governed by the 
Btatutes of Archbishop Laud. The books in Mer- 



UNIVERSITIES. 203 

ton Library are still chained to the wall. Here, 
on August 27, 1660, John Milton's Pro Populo 
Anglicano Defensio, and Iconoclastes were commit- 
ted to the flames. I saw the school-court or quad- 
rangle, where, in 1683, the Convocation caused the 
Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes to be publicly burnt. 
I do not know whether this learned body have yet 
heard of the Declaration of American Independ- 
ence, or whether the Ptolemaic astronomy does not 
still hold its ground against the novelties of Co- 
pernicus. 

As many sons, almost so many benefactors. It 
is usual for a nobleman, or indeed for almost every 
wealthy student, on quitting college, to leave be- 
hind him some article of plate ; and gifts of all 
values, from a hall, or a fellowship, or a library, 
down to a picture or a spoon, are continually accru- 
ing, in the course of a century. My friend Doc- 
tor J., gave me the following anecdote. In Sir 
Thomas Lawrence's collection at London, were the 
cartoons of Raphael and Michel Angelo. This 
inestimable prize was offered to Oxford Univer- 
sity for seven thousand pounds. The offer was 
accepted, and the committee charged with the affair 
had collected three thousand pounds, when among 
other friends, they called on Lord Eldon. Instead 
of a hundred pounds, he surprised them by putting 



204 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

down his name for three thousand pounds. They 
told him, they should now very easily raise the 
remainder. " No," he said, " your men have 
probably already contributed all they can spare ; I 
can as well give the rest " : and he withdrew his 
cheque for three thousand, and wrote four thousand 
pounds. I saw the whole collection in April, 1848. 
In the Bodleian Library, Dr. Bandinel showed 
me the manuscript Plato, of the date of A. D. 
896, brought by Dr. Clarke from Egypt ; a man- 
uscript Virgil, of the same century ; the first 
Bible printed at Mentz, (I believe in 1450) ; and 
a duplicate of the same, which had been deficient 
in about twenty leaves at the end. But, one day, 
being in Venice, he bought a room full of books 
and manuscripts, — every scrap and fragment, — 
for four thousand louis d'ors, and had the doors 
locked and sealed by the consul. On proceeding, 
afterwards, to examine his purchase, he found the 
twenty deficient pages of his Mentz Bible, in per- 
fect order ; brought them to Oxford, with the rest 
of his purchase, and placed them in the volume ; 
but has too much awe for the Providence that ap- 
pears in bibliography also, to suffer the reunited 
parts to be re-bound. The oldest building here is 
two hundred years younger than the frail manu- 
script brought by Dr. Clarke from Egypt. Na 



UNIVERSITIES. 205 

candle or fire is ever lighted in the Bodleian. Its 
catalogue is the standard catalogue on the desk of 
every library in Oxford. In each several college, 
they underscore in red ink on this catalogue the 
titles of books contained in the library of that col- 
lege, — the theory being that the Bodleian has all 
books. This rich library spent during the last year 
(1847) for the purchase of books £1668. 

The logical English train a scholar as they train 
an engineer. Oxford is a Greek factory, as Wil- 
ton mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds steel. 
They know the use of a tutor, as they know the 
use of a horse ; and they draw the greatest amount 
of benefit out of both. The reading men are kept 
by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating 
and drinking, at the top of their condition, and 
two days before the examination, do no work, but 
lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college 
doomsday. Seven years' residence is the theoretic 
period for a master's degree. In point of fact, it 
has long been three years' residence, and four years 
more of standing. This " three years " is about 
twenty-one months in all.* 

" The whole expense," says Professor Sewel, 
•* of ordinary college tuition at Oxford, is about 



* Huber, ii. p. 304, 

18 



206 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

sixteen guineas a year." But this plausible state- 
ment may deceive a reader unacquainted with the 
fact, that the principal teaching relied on is private 
tuition. And the expenses of private tuition are 
reckoned at from £50 to £70 a year, or, $1000 
for the whole course of three years and a half. At 
Cambridge $750 a year is economical, and $1500 
not extravagant.* 

The number of students and of residents, the 
dignity of the authorities, the value of the foun- 
dations, the history and the architecture, the 
known sympathy of entire Britain in what is done 
there, justify a dedication to study in the under- 
graduate, such as cannot easily be in America, 
where his college is half suspected by the Fresh- 
man to be insignificant in the scale beside trade 
and politics. Oxford is a little aristocracy in itself, 
numerous and dignified enough to rank with other 
estates in the realm ; and where fame and secular 
promotion are to be had for study, and in a direc- 
tion which has the unanimous respect of all culti- 
vated nations. 

This aristocracy, of course, repairs its own losses ; 
fills places, as they fall vacant, from the body of 
Btudents. The number of fellowships at Oxford 

* Bristed. Five Years at an English University. 



UNIVERSITIES. 207 

is 540, averaging £200 a year, with, lodging and 
diet at the college. If a young American, loving 
learning, and hindered by poverty, were offered a 
home, a table, the walks, and the library, :n one 
of these academical palaces, and a thousand dol- 
lars a year as long as he chose to remain a bach- 
elor, he would dance for joy. Yet these young 
men thus happily placed, and paid to read, are 
impatient of their few checks, and many of them 
preparing to resign their fellowships. They shud- 
dered at the prospect of dying a Fellow, and they 
pointed out to me a paralytic old man, who was as- 
sisted into the hall. As the number of undergrad- 
uates at Oxford is only about 1200 or 1300, and 
many of these are never competitors, the chance of 
a fellowship is very great. The income of the nine- 
teen colleges is conjectured at £150,000 a year. 

The effect of this drill is the radical knowledge 
of Greek and Latin, and of mathematics, and the 
solidity and taste of English criticism. What- 
ever luck there may be in this or that award, an. 
Eton captain can write Latin longs and shorts, can 
turn the Court-Guide into hexameters, and it is 
certain that a Senior Classic can quote correctly 
from the Corpus Poet arum, and is critically learned 
in all the humanities. Greek erudition exists on 
the Isis and Cam, whether the Maud man or the 



208 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Brazen Nose man be properly ranked or not ; the 
atmosphere is loaded with Greek learning ; the 
whole river has reached a certain height, and kills 
all that growth of weeds, which this Castalian 
water kills. The English nature takes culture 
kindly. So Milton thought. It refines the Norse- 
man. Access to the Greek mind lifts his standard 
of taste. He has enough to think of, and, unless 
of an impulsive nature, is indisposed from writing 
or speaking, by the fulness of his mind, and the 
new severity of his taste. The great silent crowd 
of thorough-bred Grecians always known to be 
around him, the English writer cannot ignore. 
They prune his orations, and point his pen. Hence, 
the style and tone of English journalism. The 
men have learned accuracy and comprehension, 
logic, and pace, or speed of working. They have 
bottom, endurance, wind. "When born with good 
constitutions, they make those eupeptic studying- 
mills, the cast-iron men, the dura ilia, whose 
powers of performance compare with ours, as the 
steam-hammer with the music-box ; — Cokes, Mans- 
fields, Seldens, and Bentleys, and when it happens 
that a superior brain puts a rider on this admirable 
horse, we obtain those masters of the world who 
combine the highest energy in affairs, with a supreme 
culture. 



UNIVERSITIES. 20* 

It is contended by those who have been bred at 
Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Westminster, that the 
public sentiment within each of those schools is 
high-toned and manly ; that, in their playgrounds, 
courage is universally admired, meanness despised, 
manly feelings and generous conduct are encour- 
aged : that an unwritten code of honor deals to 
the spoiled child of rank, and to the child of up- 
start wealth an even-handed justice, purges their 
nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done 
to make them gentlemen. 

Again, at the universities, it is urged, that all 
goes to form what England values as the flower 
of its national life, — a well-educated gentleman. 
The German Huber, in describing to his country- 
men the attributes of an English gentleman, frank- 
ly admits, that, " in Germany, we have nothing 
of the kind. A gentleman must possess a polit- 
ical character, an independent and public position, 
or, at least, the right of assuming it. He must 
have average opulence, either of his own, or in his 
family. He should also have bodily activity and 
strength, unattainable by our sedentary life in 
public offices. The race of English gentlemen 
presents an appearance of manly vigor and form, 
not elsewhere to be found among an equal num- 
ber of persons. No other nation produces the 
18* 



210 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

stock. And, in England, it has deteriorated. 
The university is a decided presumption in any 
man's favor. And so eminent are the members 
that a glance at the calendars will show that in all 
the world one cannot be in better company than 
on the books of one of the larger Oxford or Cam- 
bridge colleges." * 

These seminaries are finishing schools for the 
upper classes, and not for the poor. The useful 
is exploded. The definition of a public school is 
" a school which excludes all that could fit a man 
for standing behind a counter." f 

No doubt, the foundations have been perverted. 
Oxford, which equals in wealth several of the 
smaller European states, shuts up the lectureships 
which were made " public for all men thereunto 
to have concourse ; " mis-spends the revenues be- 
stowed for such youths " as should be most meet 
for towardness, poverty, and painfulness ; " there 
is gross favoritism ; many chairs and many fel- 
lowships are made beds of ease ; and 'tis likely 
that the university will know how to resist and 
make inoperative the terrors of parliamentary 

* Huber : History of the English Universities. Newman's Trans- 
lation. 

f See Bristed. Five Years in an English University. New York 
1852, 



UNIVERSITIES. 2ll 

inquiry ; no doubt, their learning is grown 
obsolete ; — but Oxford also has its merits, and 
I found here also proof of the national fidel- 
ity and thoroughness. Such knowledge as they 
prize they possess and impart. Whether in course 
or by indirection, whether by a cramming tutor or 
by examiners with prizes and foundation scholar- 
ships, education according to the English notion 
of it is arrived at. I looked over the Examin- 
ation Papers of the year 1848, for the various 
scholarships and fellowships, the Lusby, the Hert- 
ford, the Dean-Ireland, and the University, (copies 
of which were kindly given me by a Greek pro- 
fessor,) containing the tasks which many compet- 
itors had victoriously performed, and I believed 
they would prove too severe tests for the candi- 
dates for a Bachelor's degree in Yale or Harvard. 
And, in general, here was proof of a more search- 
ing study in the appointed directions, and the 
knowledge pretended to be conveyed was con- 
veyed. Oxford sends out yearly twenty or thirty 
very able men, and three or four hundred well- 
educated men. 

The diet and rough exercise secure a certain 
amount of old Norse power. A fop will fight, 
and, in exigent circumstances, will play the manly 
part. In seeing these youths, I believed i saw 



212 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

already an advantage in vigor and color and gen- 
eral habit, over their contemporaries in the Ameri- 
can colleges. No doubt much of the power and 
brilliancy of the reading-men is merely constitu- 
tional or hygienic. With a hardier habit and 
resolute gymnastics, with five miles more walking, 
or five ounces less eating, or with a saddle and 
gallop of twenty miles a day, with skating and 
rowing-matches, the American would arrive at as 
robust exegesis, and cheery and hilarious tone. I 
should readily concede these advantages, which it 
would be easy to acquire, if I did not find also 
that they read better than we, and write better. 

English wealth falling on their school and uni- 
versity training, makes a systematic reading of the 
best authors, and to the end of a knowledge how 
the things whereof they treat really stand: whilst 
pamphleteer or journalist reading for an argument 
for a party, or reading to write, or, at all events, 
for some by-end imposed on them, must read 
meanly and fragmentarily. Charles I. said, that he 
understood English law as well as a gentleman 
ought to understand it. 

Then they have access to books ; the rich libra- 
ries collected at every one of many thousands of 
houses, give an advantage not to be attained by a 
youth in this country, when one thinks how much 



UNIVERSITIES. 213 

more and better may be learned by a scholar, who, 
immediately on hearing of a book, can consult it, 
than by one who is on the quest, for years, and 
reads inferior books, because he cannot find the best. 

Again, the great number of cultivated men keep 
each other up to a high standard. The habit of 
meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the 
art of omission and selection. 

Universities are, of course, hostile to geniuses, 
which seeing and using ways of their own, dis- 
credit the routine : as churches and monasteries 
persecute youthful saints. Yet we all send our 
sons to college, and, though he be a genius, he 
must take his chance. The university must be 
retrospective. The gale that gives direction to 
the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiqui- 
ty. Oxford is a library, and the professors must 
be librarians. And I should as soon think of 
quarrelling with the janitor for not magnifying 
his office by hostile sallies into the street, like the 
Governor of Kertch or Kinburn, as of quarrel- 
ling with the professors for not admiring the 
young neologists who pluck the beards of Euclid 
and Aristotle, or for not attempting themselves to 
fill their vacant shelves as original writers. 

It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if 
We will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius 



214 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

exists there also, but will not answer a call of a 
committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, 
precarious, eccentric, and darkling. England is 
the land of mixture and surprise, and when you 
have settled it that the universities are moribund, 
out comes a poetic influence from the heart of 
Oxford, to mould the opinions of cities, to build 
their houses as simply as birds their nests, to give 
veracity to art, and charm mankind, as an appeal to 
moral order always must. But besides this resto- 
rative genius, the best poetry of England of this 
age, in the old forms, comes from two graduates 
of Cambridge. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

RELIGION. 

No people, at the present day, can be explained 
by their national religion. They do not feel re- 
sponsible for it ; it lies far outside of them. Their 
loyalty to truth, and their labor and expenditure 
rest on real foundations, and not on a national 
church. And English life, it is evident, does not 
grow out of the Athanasian creed, or the Articles, 
or the Eucharist. It is with religion as with mar- 
riage. A youth marries in haste ; afterwards, when 
his mind is opened to the reason of the conduct of 
life, he is asked, what he thinks of the institution 
of marriage, and of the right relations of the sexes ? 
' I should have much to say,' he might reply, 
( if the question were open, but I have a wife and 
children, and all question is closed for me.' In 
the barbarous days of a nation, some cultus is 
formed or imported ; altars are built, tithes are paid, 
priests ordained. The education and expenditure of 
the country* take that direction, and when wealth, 

(215) 



216 ENGLISn TRAITS. 

refinement, great men, and ties to the world, super- 
vene, its prudent men say, why fight against Fate, 
or lift these absurdities which are now mountain- 
ous ? Better find some niche or crevice in this 
mountain of stone which religious ages have quar- 
ried and carved, wherein to bestow yourself, than 
attempt any thing ridiculously and dangerously 
above your strength, like removing it. 

In seeing old castles and cathedrals, I sometimes 
say, as to-day, in front of Dundee Church tower, 
which is eight hundred years old, ' this was built 
by another and a better race than any that now look 
on it.' And, plainly, there has been great power 
of sentiment at work in this island, of which these 
buildings are the proofs : as volcanic basalts show 
the work of fire which has been extinguished for 
ages. England felt the full heat of the Christianity 
which fermented Europe, and drew, like the chem- 
istry of fire, a firm line between barbarism and 
culture. The power of the religious sentiment put 
an end to human sacrifices, checked appetite, in- 
spired the crusades, inspired resistance to tyrants, 
inspired self-respect, set bounds to serfdom and 
slavery, founded liberty, created the religious ar- 
chitecture, — York, Newstead, Westminster, Foun- 
tains Abbey, Eipon, Beverley, and Dundee, — works 
to which the key is lost, with the sentiment which 



RELIGION. 217 

created them ; inspired the English Bible, trie lit- 
urgy, the monkish histories, the chronicle of Rich- 
ard of Devizes. The priest translated the Vulgate, 
and translated the sanctities of old hagiology into 
English virtues on English ground. It was a cer- 
tain affirmative or aggressive state of the Cauca- 
sian races. Man awoke refreshed by the sleep of 
ages. The violence of the northern savages exas- 
perated Christianity into power. It lived by the 
love of the people. Bishop Wilfrid manumitted 
two hundred and fifty serfs, whom he found at- 
tached to the soil. The clergy obtained respite 
from labor for the boor on the Sabbath, and on 
church festivals. " The lord who compelled his 
boor to labor between sunset on Saturday and sun- 
set on Sunday, forfeited him altogether." The 
priest came out of the people, and sympathized 
with his class. The church was the mediator, 
check, and democratic principle, in Europe. Lati- 
mer, WiclifFe, Arundel, Cobham, Antony Parsons, 
Sir Harry Vane, George Fox, Penn, Bunyan are 
the democrats, as well as the saints of their times. 
The Catholic church, thrown on this toiling, seri- 
ous people, has made in fourteen centuries a 
massive system, close fitted to the manners and 
genius of the country, at once domestical and 
stately. In the long time, it has blended with 
19 



218 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

every thing in heaven above and the earth beneath. 
It moves through a zodiac of feasts and fasts, names 
every day of the year, every town and market and 
headland and monument, and has coupled itself 
with the almanac, that no court can be held, no 
field ploughed, no horse shod, without some leave 
from the church. All maxims of prudence or shop 
or farm are fixed and dated by the church. Hence, 
its strength in the agricultural districts. The dis- 
tribution of land into parishes enforces a church 
sanction to every civil privilege ; and the gradation 
of the clergy, — prelates for the rich, and curates 
for the poor, — with the fact that a classical edu- 
cation has been secured to the clergyman, makes 
them "the link which unites the sequestered 
peasantry with the intellectual advancement of 
the age."* 

The English church has many certificates to show, 
of humble effective service in humanizing the peo- 
ple, in cheering and refining men, feeding, healing, 
and educating. It has the seal of martyrs and 
confessors ; the noblest books ; a sublime architec- 
ture ; a ritual marked by the same secular merits, 
nothing cheap or purchasable. 

From this slow-grown church important reac- 

* Wordsworth. 



RELIGION. 21C 

tions proceed ; much for culture, much for giving 
a direction to the nation's affection and will to- 
day. The carved and pictured chapel, — its entire 
surface animated with image and emblem, — made 
the parish-church a sort of book and Bible to the 
people's eye. 

Then, when the Saxon instinct had secured a 
service in the vernacular tongue, it was the tutor 
and university of the people. In York minster, on 
the day of the enthronization of the new arch- 
bishop, I heard the service of evening prayer read 
and chanted in the choir. It was strange to hear 
the pretty pastoral of the betrothal of Rebecca and 
Isaac, in the morning of the world, read with cir- 
cumstantiality in York minster, on the 13th Janu- 
ary, 1848, to the decorous English audience, just 
fresh from the Times newspaper and their wine ; 
and listening with all the devotion of national 
pride. That was binding old and new to some 
purpose. The reverence for the Scriptures is an 
element of civilization, for thus has the history of 
the world been preserved, and is preserved. Here 
in England every day a chapter of Genesis, and a 
leader in the Times. 

Another part of the same service on this occa- 
sion was not insignificant. Handel's coronation 
anthem, God save the King, was played by Dr- 



220 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Camidge on the organ, with sublime effect. The 
minster and the music were made for each other. 
It was a hint of the part the church plays as a po- 
litical engine. From his infancy, every English- 
man is accustomed to hear daily prayers for the 
queen, for the royal family and the Parliament, 
by name ; and this lifelong consecration of these 
personages cannot be without influence on his 
opinions. 

The universities, also, are parcel of the ecclesi- 
astical system, and their first design is to form the 
clergy. Thus the clergy for a thousand years have 
been the scholars of the nation. 



The national temperament deeply enjoys the un- 
broken order and tradition of its church ; the liturgy, 
ceremony, architecture ; the sober grace, the good 
company, the connection with the throne, and with 
history, which adorn it. And whilst it endears 
itself thus to men of more taste than activity, the 
stability of the English nation is passionately en- 
listed to its support, from its inextricable connection 
with the cause of public order, with politics and 
with the funds. 

Good churches are not built by bad men ; at 
least, there must be probity and enthusiasm some- 



RELIGION. 22? 

where in the society. These minsters were neither 
built nor filled by atheists. No church has had 
more learned, industrious or devoted men; plenty 
of " clerks and bishops, who, out of their gowns, 
would turn their backs on no man." * Their 
architecture still glows with faith in immortality. 
Heats and genial periods arrive in history, or, shall 
we say, plenitudes of Divine Presence, by which 
high tides are caused in the human spirit, and great 
virtues and talents appear, as in the eleventh, 
twelfth, thirteenth, and again in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, when the nation was full of 
genius and piety. 

But the age of the WiclifTes, Cobhams, Arundels, 
Beckets ; of the Latimers, Mores, Cranmers ; of 
the Taylors, Leightons, Herberts; of the Sherlocks, 
and Butlers, is gone. Silent revolutions in opin- 
ion have made it impossible that men like these 
should return, or find a place in their once sacred 
stalls. The spirit that dwelt in this church has 
glided away to animate other activities ; and they 
who come to the old shrines find apes and players 
rustling the old garments. 

The religion of England is part of good-breed- 
ing. When you see on the continent the well- 

* Fuller. 
19* 



222 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

dressed Englishman come into his ambassador's 
chapel, and put his face for silent prayer into his 
smooth-brushed hat, one cannot help feeling how 
much national pride prays with him, and the reli- 
gion of a gentleman. So far is he from attaching 
any meaning to the words, that he believes himself 
to have done almost the generous thing, and that 
it is very condescending in him to pray to God. 
A great duke said, on the occasion of a victory, in 
the House of Lords, that he thought the Almighty 
God had not been well used by them, and that it 
would become their magnanimity, after so great 
successes, to take order that a proper acknowledg- 
ment be made. It is the church of the gentry ; 
but it is not the church of the poor. The opera- 
tives do not own it, and gentlemen lately testified 
in the House of Commons that in their lives they 
never saw a poor man in a ragged coat inside a 
church. 

The torpidity on the side of religion of the vigor- 
ous English understanding, shows how much wit 
and folly can agree in one brain. Their religion is a 
quotation ; their church is a doll ; and any exam- 
ination is interdicted with screams of terror. In 
good company, you expect them to laugh at the 
fanaticism of the vulgar ; but they do not : they 
are the vulgar. 



RELIGION. 22% 

The English, in common perhaps with Christen- 
dom in the nineteenth century, do not respect 
power, but only performance ; value ideas only for 
an economic result. Wellington esteems a saint 
only as far as he can be an army chaplain : — " Mr. 
Briscoll, by his admirable conduct and good sense, 
got the better of Methodism, which had appeared 
among the soldiers, and once among the officers." 
They value a philosopher as they value an apothe- 
cary who brings bark or a drench ; and inspiration 
is only some blowpipe, or a finer mechanical aid. 

. I suspect that there is in an Englishman's brain 
a valve that can be closed at pleasure, as an engi- 
neer shuts off steam. The most sensible and well- 
informed men possess the power of thinking just 
so far as the bishop in religious matters, and as the 
chancellor of the exchequer in politics. They 
talk with courage and logic, and show you magnif- 
icent results, but the same men who have brought 
free trade or geology to their present standing, 
look grave and lofty, and shut down their valve, 
as soon as the conversation approaches the English 
church. After that, you talk with a box-turtle. 

The action of the university, both in what is 
taught, and in the spirit of the place, is directed 
more on producing an English gentleman, than a 
saint or a psychologist. It ripens a bishop, and 



224 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

extrudes a philosopher. I do not know that there 
is more cabalism in the Anglican, than in other 
churches, but the Anglican clergy are identified 
with the aristocracy. They say, here, that, if you 
talk with a clergyman, you are sure to find him 
well-bred, informed, and candid. He entertains 
your thought or your project with sympathy and 
praise. But if a second clergyman come in, the 
sympathy is at an end : two together are inaccessi- 
ble to your thought, and, whenever it comes to 
action, the clergyman invariably sides with his 
church. 

The Anglican church is marked by the grace 
and good sense of its forms, by the manly grace 
of its clergy. The gospel it preaches, is, « By taste 
are ye saved.' It keeps the old structures in re- 
pair, spends a world of money in music and build- 
ing ; and in buying Pugin, and architectural litera- 
ture. It has a general good name for amenity and 
mildness. It is not in ordinary a persecuting 
church ; it is not inquisitorial, not even inquisitive, 
is perfectly well-bred, and can shut its eyes on all 
proper occasions. If you let it alone, it will let 
you alone. But its instinct is hostile to all change 
in politics, literature, or social arts. The church 
has not been the founder of the London University > 
of the Mechanics' Institutes, of the Free School, 01 



RELIGION. 225 

whatever aims at diffusion of knowledge. The 
Platonists of Oxford are as bitter against this her- 
esy, as Thomas Taylor. 

The doctrine of the Old Testament is the religion 
of England. The first leaf of the New Testament 
it does not open. It believes in a Providence which 
does not treat with levity a pound sterling. They 
are neither transcendentalists nor christians. They 
put up no Socratic prayer, much less any saintly 
prayer for the queen's mind ; ask neither for light 
nor right, but say bluntly, " grant her in health 
and wealth long to live." And one traces this 
Jewish prayer in all English private history, from 
the prayers of King Richard, in Richard of Devi- 
zes' Chronicle, to those in the diaries of Sir 
Samuel Romilly, and of Haydon the painter 
" Abroad with my wife," writes Pepys piously, 
" the first time that ever I rode in my own coach ; 
which do make my heart rejoice and praise God, 
and pray him to bless it to me, and continue it." 
The bill for the naturalization of the Jews (in 1753) 
was resisted by petitions from all parts of the 
kingdom, and by petition from the city of London, 
reprobating this bill, as " tending extremely to the 
dishonor of the Christian religion, and extremely 
injurious to the interests and commerce of the 
kingdom in general, and of the city of London in 
particular." 



226 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

But they have not been able to congeal humanity 
by act of Parliament. " The heavens journey still 
and sojourn not/' and arts, wars, discoveries, and 
opinion, go onward at their own pace. The new 
age has new desires, new enemies, new trades, new 
charities, and reads the Scriptures with new eyes. 
The chatter of French politics, the steam-whistle, 
the hum of the mill, and the noise of embarking 
emigrants, had quite put most of the old legends 
out of mind ; so that when you came to read the 
liturgy to a modern congregation, it was almost ab- 
surd in its unfitness, and suggested a masquerade 
of old costumes. 

No chemist has prospered in the attempt to 
crystallize a religion. It is endogenous, like the 
skin, and other vital organs. A new statement 
every day. The prophet and apostle knew this, 
and the nonconformist confutes the conformists, by 
quoting the texts they must allow. It is the con- 
dition of a religion, to require religion for its ex- 
positor. Prophet and apostle can only be rightly 
understood by prophet and apostle. The states- 
man knows that the religious element will not fail, 
any more than the supply of fibrine and chyle ; 
but it is in its nature constructive, and will organ- 
ize such a church as it wants. The wise legislatoi 
will spend on temples, schools, libraries, colleges 



RELIGION. 227 

but will shun the enriching of priests. If, in any 
manner, he can leave the election and paying of 
the priest to the people, he will do well. Like 
the Quakers, he may resist the separation of a 
class of priests, and create opportunity and expec- 
tation in the society, to run to meet natural endow- 
ment, in this kind. But, when wealth accrues to 
a chaplaincy, a bishopric, or rectorship, it requires 
moneyed men for its stewards, who will give it 
another direction than to the mystics of their day. 
Of course, money will do after its kind, and will 
steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the 
people to whom it was bequeathed. The class 
certain to be excluded from all preferment are the 
religious, — and driven to other churches ; — which 
is nature's vis medicatrix. 

The curates are ill paid, and the prelates are 
overpaid. This abuse draws into the church the 
children of the nobility, and other unfit persons, 
who have a taste for expense. Thus a bishop is 
jnly a surpliced merchant. Through his lawn, I can 
see the bright buttons of the shopman's coat glit- 
ter. A wealth like that of Durham makes almost 
a premium on felony. Brougham, in a speech in 
the House of Commons on the Irish elective 
franchise, said, " How will the reverend bishops 
of the other house be able to express their due ab- 



228 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

horrence of the crime of perjury, who solemnly 
declare in the presence of God, that when they 
are called upon to accept a living, perhaps of 
£4000 a year, at that very instant, they are moved 
by the Holy Ghost to accept the office and admin- 
istration thereof, and for no other reason what- 
ever ? " The modes of initiation are more dam- 
aging than custom-house oaths. The Bishop is 
elected by the Dean and Prebends of the cathedral. 
The Queen sends these gentlemen a conge d'elire, 
or leave to elect ; but also sends them the name 
of the person whom they are to elect. They go 
into the cathedral, chant and pray, and beseech the 
Holy Ghost to assist them in their choice ; and, 
after these invocations, invariably find that the 
dictates of the Holy Ghost agree with the recom- 
mendations of the Queen. 

But you must pay for conformity. All goes 
well as long as you run with conformists. But 
you, who are honest man in other particulars, know, 
that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty 
reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel 
to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, 
you sink into the class of counterfeits. Besides, 
this succumbing has grave penalties. If you take 
in a lie, you must take in all that belongs to it. 
England accepts this ornamented national church, 



RELIGION. 229 

and it glazes the eyes, bloats the flesh, gives the 
voice a stertorous clang, and clouds the under- 
standing of the receivers. 

The English church, undermined by German 
criticism, had nothing left but tradition, and was 
led logically back to Romanism. But that was an 
element which only hot heads could breathe : in 
view of the educated class, generally, it was not a 
fact to front the sun ; and the alienation of such 
men from the church became complete. 

Nature, to be sure, had her remedy. Religious 
persons are driven out of the Established Church 
into sects, which instantly rise to credit, and hold 
the Establishment in check. Nature has sharper 
remedies, also. The English, abhorring change in 
all things, abhorring it most in matters of religion, 
cling to the last rag of form, and are dreadfully 
given to cant. The English, (and I wish it were 
confined to them, but 'tis a taint in the Anglo- 
Saxon blood in both hemispheres,) the English 
and the Americans cant beyond all other nations. 
The French relinquish all that industry to them. 
What is so odious as the polite bows to God, in 
our books and newspapers ? The popular press is 
flagitious in the exact measure of its sanctimony, 
and the religion of the day is a theatrical Sinai, 
where the thunders are supplied by the property- 
20 



230 



ENGLISH TRAITS. 



man. The fanaticism and hypocrisy create satire. 
Punch finds an inexhaustible material. Dickens 
writes novels on Exeter-Hall humanity. Thack- 
eray exposes the heartless high life. Nature re- 
venges herself more summarily by the heathenism 
of the lower classes. Lord Shaftesbury calls the 
poor thieves together, and reads sermons to them, 
and they call it ' gas.' George Borrow summons 
the Gypsies to hear his discourse on the Hebrews 
in Egypt, and reads to them the Apostles' Creed 
in Rommany. " When I had concluded," he says, 
" I looked around me. The features of the as- 
sembly were twisted, and the eyes of all turned 
upon me with a frightful squint : not an individual 
present but squinted ; the genteel Pepa, the good- 
humored Chicharona, the Cosdami, all squinted : 
the Gypsy jockey squinted worst of all." 

The church at this moment is much to be pitied. 
She has nothing left but possession. If a bishop 
meets an intelligent gentleman, and reads fatal in- 
terrogations in his eyes, he has no resource but to 
take wine with him. False position introduces 
cant, perjury, simony, and ever a lower class of 
mind and character into the clergy : and, when 
the hierarchy is afraid of science and education, 
afraid of piety, afraid of tradition, and afraid of 
theology, there is nothing left but to quit a church 
which, w no longer one. 



RELIGION. 233 

But the religion of England, — is it the Estab- 
lished Church ? no ; is it the sects ? no ; they 
are only perpetuations of some private man's dis- 
sent, and are to the Established Church as cabs 
are to a coach, cheaper and more convenient, but 
really the same thing. Where dwells the religion ? 
Tell me first where dwells electricity, or motion, 
or thought or gesture. They do not dwell or stay 
at all. Electricity cannot be made fast, mortared 
up and ended, like London Monument, or the 
Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, 
and keep it fixed, as the English do with their 
things, forevermore ; it is passing, glancing, ges- 
ticular ; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a 
secret, which perplexes them, and puts them out. 
Yet, if religion be the doing of all good, and for 
its sake the suffering of all evil, souffrir de tout It 
monde et nefaire souffrir per sonne, that divine secret 
has existed in England from the days of Alfred to 
those of Komilly, of Clarkson, and of Florence 
Nightingale, and in thousands who have no fame. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

LITERATURE. 

A strong common sense, which it is not easy to 
unseat or disturb, marks the English mind for a 
thousand years : a rude strength newly applied to 
thought, as of sailors and soldiers who had lately 
learned to read. They have no fancy, and never 
are surprised into a covert or witty word, such as 
pleased the Athenians and Italians, and was con- 
vertible into a fable not long after ; but they de- 
light in strong earthy expression, not mistakable, 
coarsely true to the human body, and, though 
spoken among princes, equally fit and welcome to 
the mob. This homeliness, veracity, and plain 
style, appear in the earliest extant works, and in the 
latest. It imports into songs and ballads the smell 
of the earth, the breath of cattle, and, like a Dutch 
painter, seeks a household charm, though by pails 
and pans. They ask their constitutional utility in 
verse. The kail and herrings are never out of sight. 
The poet nimbly recovers himself from every 

(232) 






LITERATURE. 235 

sally of the imagination. The English muse lovea 
the farmyard, the lane, and market. She says, 
with De Stael, " I tramp in the mire with wooden 
shoes, whenever they would force me into the 
clouds." For, the Englishman has accurate per- 
ceptions ; takes hold of things by the right end, 
and there is no slipperiness in his grasp. He 
loves the axe, the spade, the oar, the gun, the 
steampipe : he has built the engine he uses. He 
is materialist, economical, mercantile. He must 
be treated with sincerity and reality, with muffins, 
and not the promise of muffins ; and prefers his 
hot chop, with perfect security and convenience in 
the eating of it, to the chances of the amplest and 
Frenchiest bill of fare, engraved on embossed pa- 
per. When he is intellectual, and a poet or a 
philosopher, he carries the same hard truth and 
the same keen machinery into the mental sphere. 
His mind must stand on a fact. He will not be 
baffled, or catch at clouds, but the mind must have 
a symbol palpable and resisting. What he relishes 
in Dante, is the vice-like tenacity with which he 
holds a mental image before the eyes, as if it were 
a scutcheon painted on a shield. Byron " liked 
something craggy to break his mind upon." A 
taste for plain strong speech, what is called a bibli- 
cal style, marks the English. It is in Alfred, and 
20* 



234 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

the Saxon Chronicle, and in the Sagas of the 
Northmen. Latimer was homely. Hobbes was 
perfect in the " noble vulgar speech." Donne, 
Bunyan, Milton, Taylor, Evelyn, Pepys, Hooker, 
Cotton, and the translators, wrote it. How real- 
istic or materialistic in treatment of his subject, is 
Swift. He describes his fictitious persons, as if 
for the police. Defoe has no insecurity or choice. 
Hudibras has the same hard mentality, — keeping 
the truth at once to the senses, and to the intellect. 

It is not less seen in poetry. Chaucer's hard 
painting of his Canterbury pilgrims satisfies the 
senses. Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton, in their 
loftiest ascents, have this national grip and exacti- 
tude of mind. This mental materialism makes 
the value of English transcendental genius ; in 
these writers, and in Herbert, Henry More, Donne, 
and Sir Thomas Browne. The Saxon materialism 
and narrowness, exalted into the sphere of intel- 
lect, makes the very genius of Shakspeare and 
Milton. When it reaches the pure element, it 
treads the clouds as securely as the adamant. Even 
in its elevations, materialistic, its poetry is common 
sense inspired ; or iron raised to white heat. 

The marriage of the two qualities is in their 
speech. It is a tacit rule of the language to make 
the frame or skeleton, of Saxon words, and, when 



LITERATURE. 235 

elevation or ornament is sought, to interweave 
Roman ; but sparingly ; nor is a sentence made 
of Roman words alone, without loss of strength. 
The children and laborers use the Saxon unmixed. 
The Latin unmixed is abandoned to the colleges 
and Parliament. Mixture is a secret of the Eng- 
lish island ; and, in their dialect, the male principle 
is the Saxon ; the female, the Latin ; and they are 
combined in every discourse. A good writer, if 
he has indulged in a Roman roundness, makes 
haste to chasten and nerve his period by English 
monosyllables. 

When the Gothic nations came into Europe, 
they found it lighted with the sun and moon of 
Hebrew and of Greek genius. The tablets of 
their brain, long kept in the dark, were finely 
sensible to the double glory. To the images from 
this twin source (of Christianity and art), the mind 
became fruitful as by the incubation of the Holy 
Ghost. The English mind flowered in every fac- 
ulty. The common-sense was surprised and in- 
spired. For two centuries, England was philosoph- 
ic, religious, poetic. The mental furniture seemed 
of larger scale ; the memory capacious like the 
storehouse of the rains ; the ardor and endurance 
of study ; the boldness and facility of their mental 
construction ; their fancy, and imagination, and 



236 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

easy spanning of vast distances of thought ; the 
enterprise or accosting of new subjects ; and, gen- 
erally, the easy exertion of power, astonish, like 
the legendary feats of Guy of Warwick. The 
union of Saxon precision and oriental soaring, of 
which Shakspeare is the perfect example, is shared 
in less degree by the writers of two centuries. I 
find not only the great masters out of all rivalry 
and reach, but the whole writing of the time 
charged with a masculine force and freedom. 

There is a hygienic simpleness, rough vigor, and 
closeness to the matter in hand, even in the second 
and third class of writers ; and, I think, in the 
common style of the people, as one finds it in the 
citation of wills, letters, and public documents, in 
proverbs, and forms of speech. The more hearty 
and sturdy expression may indicate that the sav- 
ageness of the Norseman was not all gone. Their 
dynamic brains hurled off their words, as the re- 
volving stone hurls off scraps of grit. I could cite 
from the seventeenth cent jry sentences and phrases 
of edsje not to be mat -hed in the nineteenth. 
Their poets by simple ijrce of mind equalized 
themselves with the accumulated science of ours. 
The country gentlemen had a posset or drink they 
called October ; and the poets, as if by this hint, 
knew how to distil the whole season into their 



LITERATURE. ' 237 

autumnal verses : and, as nature, to pique the more, 
sometimes works up deformities into beauty, in 
some rare Aspasia, or Cleopatra ; and, as the Greek 
art wrought many a vase or column, in which too 
long, or too lithe, or nodes, or pits and flaws, are 
made a beauty of; so these were so quick and vital, 
that they could charm and enrich by mean and 
vulgar objects. 

A man must think that age well taught and 
thoughtful, by which masques and poems, like 
those of Ben Jonson, full of heroic sentiment in a 
manly style, were received with favor. The unique 
fact in literary history, the unsurprised reception 
of Shakspeare ; — the reception proved by his 
making his fortune ; and the apathy proved by the 
absence of all contemporary panegyric, — seems to 
demonstrate an elevation in the mind of the peo- 
ple. Judge of the splendor of a nation, by the 
insignificance of great individuals in it. The 
manner in which they learned Greek and Latin, 
before our modern facilities were yet ready, with- 
out dictionaries, grammars, or indexes, by lectures 
of a professor, followed by their own searchings, 
— required a more robust memory, and coopera- 
tion of all the faculties ; and their scholars, Cam- 
den, Usher, Selden, Mede, Gataker, Hooker, Tay- 
lor, Burton, Bentley, Brian Walton, acquired the 
solidity and method of engineers. 



238 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

The influence of Plato tinges the British genius, 
Their minds loved analogy ; were cognisant of 
resemblances, and climbers on the staircase of unity. 
'Tis a very old strife between those who elect to 
see identity, and those who elect to see discrepan- 
ces ; and it renews itself in Britain. The poets, 
of course, are of one part ; the men of the world, 
of the other. But Britain had many disciples of 
Plato ; — More, Hooker, Bacon, Sidney, Lord 
Brooke, Herbert, Browne, Donne, Spenser, Chap- 
man, Milton, Crashaw, Norris, Cudworth, Berke- 
ley, Jeremy Taylor. 

Lord Bacon has the En£ lish duality. His cen- 
turies of observations, on useful science, and his 
experiments, I suppose, were worth nothing. One 
hint of Franklin, or Watt, or .Dalton, or Davy, or 
any one who had a talent for experiment, was 
worth all his lifetime of exquisite trifles. But he 
drinks of a diviner stream, and marks the influx 
of idealism into England. Where that goes, is 
poetry, health, and progress. The rules of its 
genesis or its diffusion are not known. That knowl- 
edge, if we had it, would supersede all that we call 
science of the mind. It seems an affair of race, or 
of meta-chemistry ; — the vital point being, — how 
far the sense of unity, or instinct of seeking re- 
semblances, predominated. For, wherever the 



LITERATURE. 239 

mind takes a step, it is, to put itself at one with a 
larger class, discerned beyond the lesser class with 
which it has been conversant. Hence, all poetry, 
and all affirmative action comes. 

Bacon, in the structure of his mind, held of the 
analogists, of the idealists, or (as we popularly say, 
naming from the best example) Platonists. Who- 
ever discredits analogy, and requires heaps of facts, 
before any theories can be attempted, has no poetic 
power, and nothing original or beautiful will be 
produced by him. Locke is as surely the influx 
of decomposition and of prose, as Bacon and the 
Platonists, of growth. The Platonic is the poetic 
tendency ; the so-called scientific is the negative 
and poisonous. 'Tis quite certain, that Spenser, 
Burns, Byron, and Wordsworth will be Platonists ; 
and that the dull men will be Lockists. Then poli- 
tics and commerce will absorb from the educated 
class men of talents without genius, precisely 
because such have no resistance. 

Bacon, capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends, 
required in his map of the mind, first of all, uni- 
versality, or prima philosophia, the receptacle for 
all such profitable observations and axioms as fall 
not within the compass of any of the special parts 
of philosophy, but are more common, and of a 
higher stage. He held this element essential : it 



240 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

is never out of mind : lie never spares rebukes for 
such as neglect it ; believing that no perfect dis- 
covery can be made in a flat or level, but you must 
ascend to a higher science. " If any man thinketh 
philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he 
doth not consider that all professions are from 
thence served and supplied, and this I take to be 
a great cause that has hindered the progression of 
learning, because these fundamental knowledges 
have been studied but in passage." He explained 
himself by giving various quaint examples of the 
summary or common laws, of which each science 
has its own illustration. He complains, that " he 
finds this part of learning very deficient, the pro- 
founder sort of wits drawing a bucket now and 
then for their own use, but the spring-head unvis- 
ited. This was the dry light which did scorch 
and offend most men's watery natures." Plato had 
signified the same sense, when he said, " All the 
great arts require a subtle and speculative research 
into the law of nature, since loftiness of thought 
and perfect mastery over every subject seem to be 
derived from some such source as this. This 
Pericles had, in addition to a great natural genius. 
For, meeting with Anaxagoras, who was a person 
of this kind, he attached himself to him, and 
nourished himself with sublime speculations on 






LITERATURE. 241 

the absolute intelligence ; and imported thence 
into the oratorical art, whatever could be useful 
to it." 

A few generalizations always circulate in the 
world, whose authors we do not rightly know, 
which astonish, and appear to be avenues to vast 
kingdoms of thought, and these are in the world 
constant, like the Copernican and Newtonian the- 
ories in physics. In England, these may be traced 
usually to Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, or Hooker, 
even to Van Helmont and Behmen, and do all 
have a kind of filial retrospect to Plato and the 
Greeks. Of this kind is Lord Bacon's sentence, 
that " nature is commanded by obeying her ; " 
his doctrine of poetry, which ** accommodates the 
shows of things to the desires of the mind," or 
the Zoroastrian definition of poetry, mystical, yet 
exact, " apparent pictures of unapparent natures ; " 
Spenser's creed, that " soul is form, and doth the 
body make; " the theory of Berkeley, that we have 
no certain assurance of the existence of matter ; Doc- 
tor Samuel Clarke's argument for theism from the 
nature of space and time ; Harrington's political 
rule, that power must rest on land, — a rule which 
requires to be liberally interpreted ; the theory of 
Swedenborg, so cosmically applied by him, that the 
man makes his heaven and hell ; Hegel's study of 
21 



242 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

civil history, as the conflict of ideas and the vic- 
tory of the deeper thought ; the identity -philoso- 
phy of Schelling, couched in the statement that 
" all difference is quantitative." So the very an- 
nouncement of the theory of gravitation, of Kep- 
ler's three harmonic laws, and even of Dalton'a 
doctrine of definite proportions, finds a sudden 
response in the mind, which remains a superior 
evidence to empirical demonstrations. I cite these 
generalizations, some of which are more recent, 
merely to indicate a class. Not these particulars, 
but the mental plane or the atmosphere from which 
they emanate, was the home and element of the 
writers and readers in what we loosely call the 
Elizabethan age, (say, in literary history, the 
period from 1575 to 1625,) yet a period almost 
short enough to justify Ben Jonson's remark on 
Lord Bacon ; " about his time, and within his 
view, were born all the wits that could honor a 
nation, or help study." 

Such richness of genius had not existed more 
than once before. These heights could not be 
maintained. As we find stumps of vast trees in 
our exhausted soils, and have received traditions 
of their ancient fertility to tillage, so history reck- 
ons epochs in which the intellect of famed racea 
became effete. So it fared with English genius. 



LITERATURE. 245 

These heights were followed by a meanness, and a 
descent of the mind into lower levels ; the loss of 
wings ; no high speculation. Locke, to whom the 
meaning of ideas was unknown, became the type of 
philosophy, and his " understanding " the measure, 
in all nations, of the English intellect. His coun- 
trymen forsook the lofty sides of Parnassus, on 
which they had once walked with echoing steps, and 
disused the studies once so beloved ; the powers of 
thought fell into neglect. The later English want 
the faculty of Plato and Aristotle, of grouping 
men in natural classes by an insight of general 
laws, so deep, that the rule is deduced with equal 
precision from few subjects or from one, as from 
multitudes of lives. Shakspeare is supreme in 
that, as in all the great mental energies. The 
Germans generalize : the English cannot interpret 
the German mind. German science comprehends 
the English. The absence of the faculty in Eng- 
land is shown by the timidity which accumulates 
mountains of facts, as a bad general wants myriads 
of men and miles of redoubts, to compensate the 
inspirations of courage and conduct. 

The English shrink from a generalization. " They 
do not look abroad into universality, or they draw 
only a bucket- full at the fountain of the First Phi- 
losophy for their occasion, and do not go to the 



244 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

spring -head." Bacon, who said this, is almost 
unique among his countrymen in that faculty, at 
least among the prose-writers. Milton, who was 
the stair or high table-land to let down the English 
genius from the summits of Shakspeare, used this 
privilege sometimes in poetry, more rarely in prose. 
For a long interval afterwards, it is not found. 
Burke was addicted to generalizing, but his was a 
shorter line ; as his thoughts have less depth, they 
have less compass. Hume's abstractions are not 
deep or wise. He owes his fame to one keen ob- 
servation, that no copula had been detected be- 
tween any cause and effect, either in physics or 
in thought ; that the term cause and effect was 
loosely or gratuitously applied to what we know 
only as consecutive, not at all as causal. Doctor 
Johnson's written abstractions have little value : 
the tone of feeling in them makes their chief 
worth. 

Mr. Hallam, a learned and elegant scholar, has 
written the history of European literature for three 
centuries, — a performance of great ambition, in- 
asmuch as a judgment was to be attempted on every 
book. But his eye does not reach to the ideal 
standards : the verdicts are all dated from London : 
all new thought must be cast into the old moulds. 
The expansive element which creates literature is 



LITERATURE. 245 

iteadily denied. Plato is resisted, and his school. 
Hallam is uniformly polite, but with deficient 
sympathy ; writes with resolute generosity, but is 
unconscious of the deep worth which lies in the 
mystics, and which often outvalues as a seed of 
power and a source of revolution all the correct 
writers and shining reputations of their day. He 
passes in silence, or dismisses with a kind of con- 
tempt, the profounder masters : a lover of ideas is 
not only uncongenial, but unintelligible. Hallam 
inspires respect by his knowledge and fidelity, by 
his manifest love of good books, and he lifts him- 
self to own better than almost any the greatness of 
Shakspeare, and better than Johnson he appreci- 
ates Milton. But in Hallam, or in the firmer 
intellectual nerve of Mackintosh, one still finds the 
same type of English genius. It is wise and rich, 
but it lives on its capital. It is retrospective. 
How can it discern and hail the new forms that are 
looming up on the horizon, — new and gigantic 
thoughts which cannot dress themselves out of any 
old wardrobe of the past ? 

The essays, the fiction, and the poetry of the day 
have the like municipal limits. Dickens, with 
preternatural apprehension of the language of man- 
ners, and the varieties of street life, with pathos 
and laughter, with patriotic and still enlarging 
21* 



246 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

generosity, writes London tracts. He is a painter 
of English details, like Hogarth ; local and tem- 
porary in his tints and style, and local in his aims. 
Bulwer, an industrious writer, with occasional abil- 
ity, is distinguished for his reverence of intellect 
as a temporality, and appeals to the worldly am- 
bition of the student. His romances tend to fan 
these low flames. Their novelists despair of the 
heart. Thackeray finds that God has made no al- 
lowance for the poor thing in his universe ; — 
more's the pity, he thinks ; — but 'tis not for us to 
be wiser : we must renounce ideals, and accept 
London. 

The brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone 
of the English governing classes of the day, ex- 
plicitly teaches, that good means good to eat, good 
to wear, material commodity ; that the glory of 
modern philosophy is its direction on " fruit ; " to 
yield economical inventions ; and that its merit is 
to avoid ideas, and avoid morals He thinks it 
the distinctive merit of the Baconian philosophy, 
in its triumph over the old Platonic, its disen- 
tangling the intellect from theories of the all-Fair 
and all-Good, and pinning it down to the making 
a better sick chair and a better wine-whey for an 
invalid ; — this not ironically, but in good faith ; 
— that, " solid advantage," as he calls it, meaning 



LITERATURE. 247 

always sensual benefit, is the only good. The 
eminent benefit of astronomy is the better nav- 
igation it creates to enable the fruit-ships to bring 
home their lemons and wine to the London gro- 
cer. It was a curious result, in which the civility 
and religion of England for a thousand years, ends, 
in denying morals, and reducing the intellect to a 
sauce-pan. The critic hides his skepticism under 
the English cant of practical. To convince the 
reason, to touch the conscience, is romantic preten- 
sion. The fine arts fall to the ground. Beauty, 
except as luxurious commodity, does not exist. It 
is very certain, I may say in passing, that if Lord 
Bacon had been only the sensualist his critic pre- 
tends, he would never have acquired the fame which 
now entitles him to this patronage. It is because 
he had imagination, the leisures of the spirit, and 
basked in an element of contemplation out of all 
modern English atmospheric gauges, that he is 
impressive to the imaginations of men, and has 
become a potentate not to be ignored. Sir David 
Brewster sees the high place of Bacon, without 
rinding Newton indebted to him, and thinks it a 
mistake. Bacon occupies it by specific gravity or 
levity, not by any feat he did, or by any tutoring 
more or less of Newton &c, but an effect of the 



248 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

same cause which showed itself more pronounced 
afterwards in Hooke, Boyle, and Halley. 

Coleridge, a catholic mind, with a hunger for 
ideas, with eyes looking before and after to the 
highest bards and sages, and who wrote and spoke 
the only high criticism in his time, — is one of 
those who save England from the reproach of no 
longer possessing the capacity to appreciate what 
rarest wit the island has yielded. Yet the mis- 
fortune of his life, his vast attempts but most 
inadequate performings, failing to accomplish any 
one masterpiece, seems to mark the closing of an 
era. Even in him, the traditional Englishman was 
too strong for the philosopher, and he fell into 
accommodations : and, as Burke had striven to 
idealize the English State, so Coleridge ' narrowed 
his mind ' in the attempt to reconcile the gothic 
rule and dogma of the Anglican Church, with eter- 
nal ideas. But for Coleridge, and a lurking taci- 
turn minority, uttering itself in occasional criticism, 
oftener in private discourse, one would say, that 
in Germany and in America, is the best mind in 
England rightly respected. It is the surest sign 
of national decay, when the Bramins can no longer 
read or understand the Braminical philosophy. 

In the decomposition and asphyxia that followed 



LITERATURE. 249 

all this materialism, Carlyle was driven by his dis- 
gust at the pettiness and the cant, into the preaching 
of Fate. In comparison with all this rottenness, 
any check, any cleansing, though by fire, seemed 
desirable and beautiful. He saw little difference in 
the gladiators, or the M causes " for which they 
combated ; the one comfort was, that they were all 
going speedily into the abyss together : And his 
imagination, finding no nutriment in any creation, 
avenged itself by celebrating the majestic beauty 
of the laws of decay. The necessities of mental 
structure force all minds into a few categories, and 
where impatience of the tricks of men makes Nem- 
esis amiable, and builds altars to the negative Deity, 
the inevitable recoil is to heroism or the gallantry 
of the private heart, which decks its immolation 
with glory, in the unequal combat of will against 
fate. 

Wilkinson, the editor of Swedenborg, the anno- 
tator of Fourier, and the champion of Hahnemann, 
has brought to metaphysics and to physiology a 
native vigor, with a catholic perception of relations, 
equal to the highest attempts, and a rhetoric like 
the armory of the invincible knights of old. There 
is in the action of his mind a long Atlantic roll 
not known except in deepest waters, and only 
lacking what ought to accompany such powers, a 



250 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

manifest centrality. If his mind does not rest in 
immovable biases, perhaps the orbit is larger, and 
the return is not yet : but a master should inspire 
a confidence that he will adhere to his convictions, 
and give his present studies always the same high 
place. 

It would be easy to add exceptions to the limit- 
ary tone of English thought, and much more easy 
to adduce examples of excellence in particular 
veins : and if, going out of the region of dogma, 
we pass into that of general culture, there is no 
end to the graces and amenities, wit, sensibility 
and erudition, of the learned class. But the arti- 
ficial succor which marks all English performance, 
appears in letters also : much of their aesthetic pro- 
duction is antiquarian and manufactured, and 
literary reputations have been achieved by forcible 
men, whose relation to literature was purely acci- 
dental, but who were driven by tastes and modes 
they found in vogue into their several careers. So, 
at this moment, every ambitious young man studies 
geology : so members of Parliament are made, and 
churchmen. 

The bias of Englishmen to practical skill has re- 
acted on the national mind. They are incapable 
of an inutility, and respect the five mechanic pow- 
ers even in their song. The voice of their modern 



LITERATURE. 251 

muse has a slight hint of the steam-whistle, and 
the poem is created as an ornament and finish of 
their monarchy, and by no means as the bird of a 
new morning which forgets the past world in the 
full enjoyment of that which is forming. They 
are with difficulty ideal ; they are the most con- 
ditioned men, as if, having the best conditions, they 
could not bring themselves to forfeit them. Every 
one of them is a thousand years old, and lives by 
his memory : and when you say this, they accept 
it as praise. 

Nothing comes to the book-shops but politics, 
travels, statistics, tabulation, and engineering, and 
even what is called philosophy and letters is me- 
chanical in its structure, as if inspiration had 
ceased, as if no vast hope, no religion, no song 
of joy, no wisdom, no analogy, existed any more. 
The tone of colleges, and of scholars and of lit- 
erary society has this mortal air. I seem to walk 
on a marble floor, where nothing will grow. They 
exert every variety of talent on a lower ground, 
and may be said to live and act in a sub-mind. 
They have lost all commanding views in literature, 
philosophy, and science. A good Englishman 
shuts himself out of three fourths of his mind, 
and confines himself to one fourth. He has learn- 
ing, good sense, power of labor, and logic : but a 



252 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

faith in the laws of the mind like that of Archi- 
medes ; a belief like that of Euler and Kepler, 
that experience must follow and not lead the 
laws of the mind ; a devotion to the theory of 
politics, like that of Hooker, and Milton, and Har- 
rington, the modern English mind repudiates. 

I fear the same fault lies in their science, since 
they have known how to make it repulsive, and 
bereave nature of its charm ; — though perhaps the 
complaint flies wider, and the vice attaches to many 
more than to British physicists. The eye of the 
naturalist must have a scope like nature itself, a 
susceptibility to all impressions, alive to the heart 
as well as to the logic of creation. But English 
science puts humanity to the door. It wants the 
connection which is the test of genius. The sci- 
ence is false by not being poetic. It isolates the 
reptile or mollusk it assumes to explain ; whilst 
reptile or mollusk only exists in system, in rela- 
tion. The poet only sees it as an inevitable step 
in the path of the Creator. Bat, in England, one 
hermit finds this fact, and another finds that, and 
lives and dies ignorant of its value. There are 
great exceptions, of John Hunter, a man of ideas ; 
perhaps of Robert Brown, the botanist ; and of 
Richard Owen, who has imported into Britain the 
Geinian homologies, and enriched science with 



LITERATURE. 253 

contributions of his own, adding sometimes the 
divination of the old masters to the unbroken power 
of labor in the English mind. But for the most 
part, the natural science in England is out of its 
loyal alliance with morals, and is as void of imagi- 
nation and free play of thought, as conveyancing. 
It stands in strong contrast with the genius of the 
Germans, those semi-Greeks, who love analogy, 
and, by means of their height of view, preserve 
their enthusiasm, and think for Europe. 

No hope, no sublime augury cheers the student, 
no secure striding from experiment onward to a 
foreseen law, but only a casual dipping here and 
there, like diggers in California " prospecting for a 
placer " that will pay. A horizon of brass of the 
diameter of his umbrella shuts down around his 
senses. Squalid contentment with conventions, sa- 
tire at the names of philosophy and religion, paro- 
chial and shop-till politics, and idolatry of usage, 
betray the ebb of life and spirit. As they trample 
on nationalities to reproduce London and Londoners 
in Europe and Asia, so they fear the hostility of 
ideas, of poetry, of religion, — ghosts which they 
cannot lay; — and, having attempted to domesticate 
and dress the Blessed Soul itself in English broad- 
cloth and gaiters, they are tormented with fear 
that herein lurks a force that will sweep their 
22 



254 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

system away. The artists say, " Nature puts them 
out ; " the scholars have become un-ideal. They 
parry earnest speech with banter and levity ; they 
laugh you down, or they change the subject. 
<( The fact is," say they over their wine, " all that 
about liberty, and so forth, is gone by ; it won't do 
any longer." The practical and comfortable op- 
press them with inexorable claims, and the smallest 
fraction of power remains for heroism and poetry. 
No poet dares murmur of beauty out of the 
precinct of his rhymes. No priest dares hint at 
a Providence which does not respect English utility. 
The island is a roaring volcano of fate, of material 
values, of tariffs, and laws of repression, glutted 
markets and low prices. 

In the absence of the highest aims, of the pure 
love of knowledge, and the surrender to nature, 
there is the suppression of the imagination, the pri- 
apism of the senses and the understanding; we have 
the factitious instead of the natural ; tasteless ex- 
pense, arts of comfort, and the rewarding as an 
illustrious inventor whosoever will contrive one 
impediment more to interpose between the man and 
his objects. 

Thus poetry is degraded, and made ornamental. 
Pope and his school wrote poetry fit to put round 
frosted cake. What did Walter Scott write with- 



LITERATURE. fi& 

out stint ? a rhymed traveller's guide to t* .oxiand. 
And the libraries of verses they print have this 
Birmingham character. How many volumes of 
well-bred metre we must gingle through, before 
we can be filled, taught, renewed ! We want the 
miraculous ; the beauty which we can manufacture 
at no mill, — can give no account of; the beauty 
of which Chaucer and Chapman had the secret. 
The poetry of course is low and prosaic ; only now 
and then, as in Wordsworth, conscientious ; or in 
Byron, passional ; or in Tennyson, factitious. But 
if I should count the poets who have contributed to 
the bible of existing England sentences of guidance 
and consolation which are still glowing and effec- 
tive, — how few ! Shall I find my heavenly bread 
in the reigning poets ? Where is great design in 
modern English poetry? The English have lost 
sight of the fact that poetry exists to speak the 
spiritual law, and that no wealth of description or 
of fancy is yet essentially new, and out of the limits 
of prose, until this condition is reached. Therefore 
the grave old poets, like the Greek artists, heeded 
their designs, and less considered the finish. It 
was their- office to lead to the divine sources, out of 
which all this, and much more, readily springs ; 
and, if this religion is in the poetry, it raises us to 
some purpose, and we can well afford some staidness, 
or hardness, or want of popular tune in the verses. 



256 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

The exceptional fact of the period is the genius 
of Wordsworth. He had no master but nature 
and solitude. " He wrote a poem," says Landor, 
" without the aid of war." His verse is the voice 
of sanity in a worldly and ambitious age. One 
regrets that his temperament was not more liquid 
and musical. He has written longer than he was 
inspired. But for the rest, he has no competitor. 

Tennyson is endowed precisely in points where 
Wordsworth wanted. There is no finer ear, nor 
more command of the keys of language. Color, 
like the dawn, flows over the horizon from his 
pencil, in waves so rich that we do not miss the 
central form. Through all his refinements, too, 
he has reached the public, — a certificate of good 
sense and general power, since he who aspires to 
be the English poet must be as large as London, 
not in the same kind as London, but in his own 
kind. But he wants a subject, and climbs no 
mount of vision to bring its secrets to the people. 
He contents himself with describing the Englishman 
as he is, and proposes no better. There are all 
degrees in poetry, and we must be thankful for 
every beautiful talent. But it is only a first suc- 
cess, when the ear is gained. The best office of 
the best poets has been to show how low and un- 
inspired was their general style, and that only 
once or twice they have struck the high chord. 



LITERATURE. 257 

That expansiveness which is the essence of the 
poetic element, they have not. It was no Oxonian, 
but Hafiz, who said, " Let ns be crowned with roses, 
let us drink wine, and break up the tiresome old 
roof of heaven into new forms." A stanza of the 
song of nature the Oxonian has no ear for, and 
he does not value the salient and curative influ- 
ence of intellectual action, studious of truth, with- 
out a by-end. 

By the law of contraries, I look for an irresisti- 
ble taste for Orientalism in Britain. For a self- 
conceited modish life, made up of trifles, clinging 
to a corporeal civilization, hating ideas, there is 
no remedy like the Oriental largeness. That 
astonishes and disconcerts English decorum. For 
once there is thunder it never heard, light it never 
saw, and power which trifles with time and space. 
I am not surprised, then, to find an Englishman like 
Warren Hastings, who had been struck with the 
grand style of thinking in the Indian writings, 
deprecating the prejudices of his countrymen, 
while offering them a translation of the Bhagvat. 
" Might I, an unlettered man, venture to pre- 
scribe bounds to the latitude of criticism, I should 
exclude, in estimating the merit of such a produc- 
tion, all rules drawn from the ancient or modern 
literature of Europe, all references to such senti- 
22* 



258 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

ments or manners as are become the standards of 
propriety for opinion and action in our own modes, 
and, equally, all appeals to our revealed tenets 
of religion and moral duty." * He goes on to be- 
speak indulgence to " ornaments of fancy unsuited 
to our taste, and passages elevated to a tract of 
sublimity into which our habits of judgment will 
find it difficult to pursue them." 

Meantime, I know that a retrieving power lies 
in the English race, which seems to make any 
recoil possible ; in other words, there is at all 
times a minority of profound minds existing in the 
nation, capable of appreciating every soaring of 
intellect and every hint of tendency. While the 
constructive talent seems dwarfed and superficial, 
the criticism is often in the noblest tone, and sug- 
gests the presence of the invisible gods. I can 
well believe what I have often heard, that there are 
two nations in England ; but it is not the Poor and 
the Rich ; nor is it the Normans and Saxons ; nor 
the Celt and the Goth. These are each always 
becoming the other ; for Robert Owen does not 
exaggerate the power of circumstance. But the 
two complexions, or two styles of mind, — the 
perceptive class, and the practical finality class, •— 

* Preface to Wilkins's Translation of the Bhagvat Geeta. 



LITERATURE. 259 

are ever in counterpoise, interacting mutually , 
one, in hopeless minorities ; the other, in huge 
masses ; one studious, contemplative, experiment- 
ing ; the other, the ungrateful pupil, scornful 
of the source, whilst availing itself of the knowl- 
edge for gain ; these two nations, of genius and of 
animal force, though the first consist of only a dozen 
souls, and the second of twenty millions, forever 
by their discord and their accord yield the power 
of the English State. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE "TIMES." 

The power of the newspaper is familiar in 
America, and in accordance with our political sys- 
tem. In England, it stands in antagonism with 
the feudal institutions, and it is all the more benefi- 
cent succor against the secretive tendencies of a 
monarchy. The celebrated Lord Somers " knew 
of no good law proposed and passed in his time, 
to which the public papers had not directed his 
attention." There is no corner and no night. A 
relentless inquisition drags every secret to the day, 
turns the glare of this solar microscope on every 
malfaisance, so as to make the public a more terri- 
ble spy than any foreigner ; and no weakness can 
be taken advantage of by an enemy, since the 
whole people are already forewarned. Thus Eng- 
land rids herself of those incrustations which have 
been the ruin of old states. Of course, this in- 
spection is feared. No antique privilege, no com- 
fortable monopoly, but sees surely that its days 

(260) 



THE "TIMES." 261 

are counted ; the people are familiarized with the 
reason of reform, and, one by one, take away every 
argument of the obstructives. " So your grace 
likes the comfort of reading the newspapers," 
said Lord Mansfield to the Duke of Northumber- 
land ; " mark my words ; you and I shall not live 
to see it, but this young gentleman (Lord Eldon) 
may, or it may be a little later ; but a little sooner 
or later, these newspapers will most assuredly write 
the dukes of Northumberland out of their titles 
and possessions, and the country out of its king." 
The tendency in England towards social and polit- 
ical institutions like those of America, is inevita- 
ble, and the ability of its journals is the driving 
force. 

England is full of manly, clever, well-bred men 
who possess the talent of writing off-hand pungent 
paragraphs, expressing with clearness and courage 
their opinion on any person or performance. Val- 
uable or not, it is a skill that is rarely found, out of 
the English journals. The English do this, as they 
write poetry, as they ride and box, by being edu- 
cated to it. Hundreds of clever Praeds, and Freres, 
and Froudes, and Hoods, and Hooks, and Maginns, 
and Mills, and Macaulays, make poems, or short 
essays for a journal, as they make speeches in Par- 
liament and on the hustings, or, as they shoot and 



ENGLISH TRAITS. 

ride. It is a quite accidental and arbitrary direc- 
tion of their general ability. Rude health and 
spirits, an Oxford education, and the habits of so- 
ciety are implied, but not a ray of genius. It 
comes of the crowded state of the professions, the 
violent interest which all men take in politics, the 
facility of experimenting in the journals, and high 

pay- 

The most conspicuous result of this talent is 
the " Times " newspaper. No power in England 
is more felt, more feared, or more obeyed. What 
you read in the morning in that journal, you shall 
hear in the evening in all society. It has ears 
every where, and its information is earliest, com- 
pletest, and surest. It has risen, year by year, and 
victory by victory, to its present authority. I 
asked one of its old contributors, whether it had 
once been abler than it is now ? " Never," he 
said ; " these are its palmiest days." It has shown 
those qualities which are dear to Englishmen, un- 
flinching adherence to its objects, prodigal intellec- 
tual ability, and a towering assurance, backed by 
the perfect organization in its printing-house, and 
its world-wide net-work of correspondence and re- 
ports. It has its own history and famous trophies. 
In 1820, it adopted the cause of Queen Caroline^ 
and carried it against the king. It adopted a poor- 



THE "TIMES." 263 

law system, and almost alone lifted it through. 
When Lord Brougham was in power, it decided 
against him, and pulled him down. It declared 
war against Ireland, and conquered it. It adopted 
the League against the Corn Laws, and, when 
Cobden had begun to despair, it announced his 
triumph. It denounced and discredited the French 
Republic of 1848, and checked every sympathy 
with it in England, until it had enrolled 200,000 
special constables to watch the Chartists, and make 
them ridiculous on the 10th April. It first de- 
nounced and then adopted the new French Empire, 
and urged the French Alliance and its results. It 
has entered into each municipal, literary, and so- 
cial question, almost with a controlling voice. It 
has done bold and seasonable service in exposing 
frauds which threatened the commercial communi- 
ty. Meantime, it attacks its rivals by perfecting 
its printing machinery, and will drive them out of 
circulation : for the only limit to the circulation 
of the " Times " is the impossibility of printing 
copies fast enough ; since a daily paper can only 
be new and seasonable for a few hours. It will 
kill all but that paper which is diametrically in 
opposition ; since many papers, first and last, have 
lived by their attacks on the leading journal. 

The late Mr. Walter was printer of the " Times," 



264 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

and had gradually arranged the whole materiel of 
it in perfect system. It is told, that when he de- 
manded a small share in the proprietary, and was 
refused, he said, " As you please, gentlemen ; and 
you may take away the ' Times ' from this office, 
when you will ; I shall publish the ' New 
Times,' next Monday morning." The proprietors, 
who had already complained that his charges for 
printing were excessive, found that they were in 
his power, and gave him whatever he wished. 

I went one day with a good friend to the " Times " 
office, which was entered through a pretty garden- 
yard, in Printing-House Square. We walked with 
some circumspection, as if we were entering a 
powder-mill ; but the door was opened by a mild 
old woman, and, by dint of some transmission of 
cards, we were at last conducted into the parlor of 
Mr. Morris, a very gentle person, with no hostile 
appearances. The statistics are now quite out of 
date, but I remember he told us that the daily 
printing was then 35,000 copies ; that on the 1st 
March, 1848, the greatest number ever printed, — 
54,000 were issued ; that, since February, the 
daily circulation had increased by 8000 copies. 
The old press they were then using printed five or 
eix thousand sheets per hour ; the new machine, 
for which they were then building an engine, 



THE "times." 265 

would print twelve thousand per hour. Our enter- 
tainer confided us to a courteous assistant to show 
us the establishment, in which, I think, they em- 
ployed a hundred and twenty men. I remember, 
I saw the reporters' room, in which they redact 
their hasty stenographs, but the editor's room, and 
who is in it, I did not see, though I shared the curi- 
osity of mankind respecting it. 

The staff of the " Times " has always been made 
up of able men. Old Walter, Sterling, Bacon, 
Barnes, Alsiger, Horace Twiss, Jones Loycl, John 
Oxenford, Mr. Mosely, Mr. Bailey, have contribut- 
ed to its renown in their special departments. But 
it has never wanted the first pens for occasional 
assistance. Its private information is inexplicable, 
and recalls the stories of Fouche's police, whose 
omniscience made it believed that the Empress Jo- 
sephine must be in his pay. It has mercantile and 
political correspondents in every foreign city ; 
and its expresses outrun the despatches of the gov- 
ernment. One hears anecdotes of the rise of its 
servants, as of the functionaries of the India House. 
I was told of the dexterity of one of its reporters, 
who, finding himself, on one occasion, where the 
magistrates had strictly forbidden reporters, put 
his hands into his coat-pocket, and with pencil in 
one hand, and tablet in the other, did his work. 



266 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

The influence of this journal is a recognized 
power in Europe, and, of course, none is more 
conscious of it than its conductors. The tone of 
its articles has often been the occasion of comment 
from the official organs of the continental courts, 
and sometimes the ground of diplomatic complaint. 
What would the " Times " say ? is a terror in Paris, 
in Berlin, in Vienna, in Copenhagen, and in Ne- 
paul. Its consummate discretion and success ex- 
hibit the English skill of combination. The daily 
paper is the work of many hands, chiefly, it is said, 
of young men recently from the University, and 
perhaps reading law in chambers in London. 
Hence the academic elegance, and classic allusion, 
which adorn its columns. • Hence, too, the heat 
and gallantry of its onset. But the steadiness of 
the aim suggests the belief that this fire is directed 
and fed by older engineers ; as if persons of exact in- 
formation, and with settled views of policy, supplied 
the writers with the basis of fact, and the object to 
be attained, and availed themselves of their younger 
energy and eloquence to plead the cause. Both 
the council and the executive departments gain by 
this division. Of two men of equal ability, the 
one who does not write, but keeps his eye on the 
course of public affairs, will have the higher judi- 
cial wisdom. But the parts are kept in concert ; 



THE "TIMES." 267 

all the articles appear to proceed from a single will. 
The " Times " never disapproves of what itself has 
said, or cripples itself by apology for the absence 
of the editor, or the indiscretion of him who held 
the pen. It speaks out bluff and bold, and sticks 
to what it says. It draws from any number of 
learned and skilful contributors ; but a more learned 
and skilful person supervises, corrects, and coordi- 
nates. Of this closet, the secret does not transpire. 
No writer is suffered to claim the authorship of 
any paper ; every thing good, from whatever quar- 
ter, comes out editorially ; and thus, by making 
the paper every thing, and those who write it noth- 
ing, the character and the awe of the journal gain. 
The English like it for its complete information. 
A statement of fact in the " Times " is as reliable 
as a citation from Hansard. Then, they like its 
independence ; they do not know, when they take 
it up, what their paper is going to say : but, above 
all, for the nationality and confidence of its tone. 
It thinks for them all ; it is their understanding 
and day's ideal daguerreotyped. When I see them 
reading its columns, they seem to me becoming 
every moment more British. It has the national 
courage, not rash and petulant, but considerate and 
determined. No dignity or wealth is a shield from 
its assault. It attacks a duke as readily as a police- 



268 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

man, and with, the most provoking airs of conde- 
scension. It makes rude work with the Board of 
Admiralty. The Bench of Bishops is still less 
safe. One bishop fares badly for his rapacity, and 
another for his bigotry, and a third for his court- 
liness. It addresses occasionally a hint to Maj- 
esty itself, and sometimes a hint which is taken. 
There is an air of freedom even in their advertis- 
ing columns, which speaks well for England to a 
foreigner. On the days when I arrived in London 
in 1847, I read among the daily announcements, 
one offering a reward of fifty pounds to any 
person who would put a nobleman, described by 
name and title, late a member of Parliament, into 
any county jail in England, he having been con- 
victed of obtaining money under false pretences. 

Was never such arrogancy as the tone of this 
paper. Every slip of an Oxonian or Cantabrigian 
w T ho writes his first leader, assumes that we sub- 
dued the earth before we sat down to write this 
particular " Times." One would think, the world 
was on its knees to the " Times " Office, for its 
daily breakfast. But this arrogance is calculated. 
Who would care for it, if it " surmised," or 
V dared to confess," or " ventured to predict," &c. 
No ; it is so, and so it shall be. 

The morality and patriotism of the " Times ' 



THE "TIMES." 263 

claims only to be representative, and by no means 
ideal. It gives the argument, not of the majority,, 
but of the commanding class. Its editors know 
better than to defend Russia, or Austria, or Eng- 
lish vested rights, on abstract grounds. But they 
give a voice to the class who, at the moment, take 
the lead ; and they have an instinct for finding 
where the power now lies, which is eternally shift- 
ing its banks. Sympathizing with, and speaking 
for the class that rules the hour, yet, being apprised 
of every ground-swell, every Chartist resolution, 
every Church squabble, every strike in the mills, 
they detect the first tremblings of change. They 
watch the hard and bitter struggles of the authors 
of each liberal movement, year by year, — watch- 
ing them only to taunt and obstruct them, — until, 
at last, when they see that these have established 
their fact, that power is on the point of passing to 
them, — they strike in, with the voice of a mon 
arch, astonish those whom they succor, as much as 
those whom they desert, and make victory sure. 
Of course, the aspirants see that the " Times " is one 
of the goods of fortune, not to be won but by 
winning their cause. 

" Punch " is equally an expression of English 
good sense, as the "London Times." It is the comic 
version of the same sense. Many of its caricature* 
23* 



270 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

are equal to the best pamphlets, and will convey 
to the eye in an instant the popular view which 
was taken of each turn of public affairs. Its 
sketches are usually made by masterly hands, and 
sometimes with genius ; the delight of every class, 
because uniformly guided by that taste which is 
tyrannical in England. It is a new trait of the 
nineteenth century, that the wit and humor of 
England, as in Punch, so in the humorists, Jer- 
rold, Dickens, Thackeray, Hood, have taken the 
direction of humanity and freedom. 

The "Times," like every important institution, 
shows the way to a better. It is a living index of 
the colossal British power. Its existence honors 
the people who dare to print all they know, dare 
to know all the facts, and do not wish to be flat- 
tered by hiding the extent of the public disaster. 
There is always safety in valor. I wish I could 
add, that this journal aspired to deserve the power 
it wields, by guidance of the public sentiment to 
the right. It is usually pretended, in Parliament 
and elsewhere, that the English press has a high 
tone, — which it has not. It has an imperial tone, 
as of a powerful and independent nation. But as 
with other empires, its tone is prone to be official, 
and even officinal. The " Times " shares all the 
limitations of the governing classes, and wishes 



THE "TIMES. 27i 

never to be in a minority. If only it dared to 
cleave to the right, to show the right to be the 
only expedient, and feed its batteries from the 
central heart of humanity, it might not have so 
many men of rank among its contributors, but 
genius would be its cordial and invincible ally ; it 
might now and then bear the brunt of formidable 
combinations, but no journal is ruined by wise 
courage. It would be the natural leader of British 
reform ; its proud function, that of being the voice 
of Europe, the defender of the exile and patriot 
against despots, would be more effectually dis- 
charged ; it would have the authority which is 
claimed for that dream of good men not yet come 
to pass, an International Congress ; and the least 
of its victories would be to give to England a new 
millennium of beneficent power. 



CHAPTER XYI. 

STONEHENGE. 

It had been agreed between my friend Mr. C. 
and me, that before I left England, we should 
make an excursion together to Stonehenge, which 
neither of us had seen; and the project pleased 
my fancy with the double attraction of the monu- 
ment and the companion. It seemed a bringing 
together of extreme points, to visit the oldest reli- 
gious monument in Britain, in company with her 
latest thinker, and one whose influence may be 
traced in every contemporary book. I was glad to 
sum up a little my experiences, and to exchange 
a few reasonable words on the aspects of England, 
with a man on whose genius I set a very high 
value, and who had as much penetration, and as 
severe a theory of duty, as any person in it. On 
Friday, 7th July, we took the South Western 
Railway through Hampshire to Salisbury, where 
we found a carriage to convey us to Amesbury. 
The fine weather and my friend's local knowledge 

(272) 



STONEHENGE. 275 

of Hampshire, in which he is wont to spend a part 
of every summer, made the way short. There was 
much to say, too, of the travelling Americans, and 
their usual objects in London. I thought it natu- 
ral, that they should give some time to works of 
art collected here, which they cannot find at home, 
and a little to scientific clubs and museums, which, 
at this moment, make London very attractive. 
But my philosopher was not contented. Art and 
• high art ' is a favorite target for his wit. " Yes, 
Kunst is a great delusion, and Goethe and Schiller 
wasted a great deal of good time on it : " — and he 
thinks he discovers that old Goethe found this out, 
and, in his later writings, changed his tone. As 
soon as men begin to talk of art, architecture, and 
antiquities, nothing good comes of it. He wishes 
to go through the British Museum in silence, and 
thinks a sincere man will see something, and say 
nothing. In these days, he thought, it would be- 
come an architect to consult only the grim neces- 
sity, and say, c I can build you a coffin for such 
dead persons as you are, and for such dead pur- 
poses as you have, but you shall have no ornament.' 
For the science, he had, if possible, even less tol- 
erance, and compared the savans of Somerset 
House to the boy who asked Confucius "how 
many stars in the sky ? " Confucius replied, u he 



274 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

minded things near him : " then said the boy 
" how many hairs are there in your eyebrows ? " 
Confucius said, " he didn't know and didn't care." 

Still speaking of the Americans, C. complained 
that they dislike the coldness and exclusiveness of 
the English, and run away to France, and go with 
their countrymen, and are amused, instead of man- 
fully staying in London, and confronting English- 
men, and acquiring their culture, who really have 
much to teach them. 

I told C. that I was easily dazzled, and was ac- 
customed to concede readily all that an English- 
man would ask ; I saw everywhere in the country 
proofs of sense and spirit, and success of every 
sort : I like the people : they are as good as they 
are handsome ; they have everything, and can do 
everything : but meantime, I surely know, that, as 
soon as I return to Massachusetts, I shall lapse at 
once into the feeling, which the geography of 
America inevitably inspires, that we play the game 
with immense advantage ; that there and not here 
is the seat and centre of the British race ; and that 
no skill or activity can long compete with the pro- 
digious natural advantages of that country, in the 
hands of the same race ; and that England, an old 
and exhausted island, must one day be contented, 
like other parents, to be strong only in her chii» 






STONEHENGE. 275 

dren, But this was a proposition which no Eng- 
lishman of whatever condition can easily entertain. 
We left the train at Salisbury, and took a car- 
riage to Amesbury, passing by Old Sarum, a bare, 
treeless hill, once containing the town which sent 
two members to Parliament, — now, not a hut ; — 
and, arriving at Amesbury, stopped at the George 
Inn. After dinner, we walked to Salisbury Plain. 
On the broad downs, under the gray sky, not a 
house was visible, nothing but Stonehenge, which 
looked like a group of brown dwarfs in the wide 
expanse, — Stonehenge and the barrows, — which 
rose like green bosses about the plain, and a few 
hayricks. On the top of a mountain, the old 
temple would not be more impressive. Far and 
wide a few shepherds with their flocks sprinkled 
the plain, and a bagman drove along the road. 
It looked as if the wide margin given in this 
crowded isle to this primeval temple were accorded 
by the veneration of the British race to the old 
egg out of which all their ecclesiastical structures 
and history had proceeded. Stonehenge is a cir- 
cular colonnade with a diameter of a hundred feet, 
and enclosing a second and a third colonnade with- 
in. We walked round the stones, and clambered 
over them, to wont ourselves with their strange 
aspect and groupings, and found a nook sheltered 
from the wind among them, where C. lighted his 



276 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

cigar. It was pleasant to see, that, just this sim- 
plest of all simple structures, — two upright stones 
and a lintel laid across, — had long outstood all 
later churches, and all history, and were like what 
is most permanent on the face of the planet : these, 
and the barrows, — mere mounds, (of which there 
are a hundred and sixty within a circle of three 
miles about Stonehenge,) like the same mound on 
the plain of Troy, which still makes good to the 
passing mariner on Hellespont, the vaunt of Ho- 
mer and the fame of Achilles. Within the enclo- 
sure, grow buttercups, nettles, and, all around, 
wild thyme, daisy, meadowsweet, goldenrod, this- 
tle, and the carpeting grass. Over us, larks were 
soaring and singing, — as my friend said, " the 
larks which were hatched last year, and the wind 
which was hatched many thousand years ago." 
We counted and measured by paces the biggest 
stones, and soon knew as much as any man can 
suddenly know of the inscrutable temple. There 
are ninety-four stones, and there were once prob- 
ably one hundred and sixty. The temple is circu- 
lar, and uncovered, and the situation fixed astro- 
nomically, — the grand entrances here, and at 
Abury, being placed exactly northeast, " as all the 
gates of the old cavern temples are." How came 
the stones here ? for these sarsens or Druidicai 



STONEHENGE. 277 

sandstones, are not found in this neighborhood. 
The sacrificial stone, as it is called, is the only one 
in all these blocks, that can resist the action of 
fire, and as I read in the books, must have been 
brought one hundred and fifty miles. 

On almost every stone we found the marks of 
the mineralogist's hammer and chisel. The nine- 
teen smaller stones of the inner circle are of gran- 
ite. I, who had just come from Professor Sedg- 
wick's Cambridge Museum of megatheria and 
mastodons, was ready to maintain that some clev- 
erer elephants or mylodonta had borne off and laid 
these rocks one on another. Only the good beasts 
must have known how to cut a well-wrought tenon 
and mortise, and to smooth the surface of some of 
the stones. The chief mystery is, that any mys- 
tery should have been allowed to settle on so re- 
markable a monument, in a country on which all 
the muses have kept their eyes now for eighteen 
hundred years. We are not yet too late to learn 
much more than is known of this structure. Some 
diligent Fellowes or Layard will arrive, stone by 
stone, at the whole history, by that exhaustive 
British sense and perseverance, so whimsical in its 
choice of objects, which leaves its own Stonehenge 
or Choir Gaur to the rabbits, whilst it opens pyr- 
amids, and uncovers Nine\eh. Stonehenge, in 

u 



278 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

virtue of the simplicity of its plan, and its good 
preservation, is as if new and recent ; and, a thou- 
sand years hence, men will thank this age for the 
accurate history it will yet eliminate. We walked 
in and out, and took again and again a fresh look 
at the uncanny stones. The old sphinx put our 
petty differences of nationality out of sight. To 
these conscious stones we two pilgrims were alike 
known and near. We could equally well revere 
their old British meaning. My philosopher was 
subdued and gentle. In this quiet house of des- 
tiny, he happened to say, " I plant cypresses wher- 
ever I go, and if I am in search of pain, I cannot 
go wrong." The spot, the gray blocks, and their 
rude order, which refuses to be disposed of, sug- 
gested to him the flight of ages, and the succession 
of religions. The old times of England impress 
C. much : he reads little, he says, in these last 
years, but " Acta Sanctorum " the fifty-three vol- 
umes of which are in the London Library. He 
finds all English history therein. He can see, as 
he reads, the old saint of Iona sitting there, and 
writing, a man to men. The Acta Sanctorum 
show plainly that the men of those times believed 
in God, and in the immortality of the soul, as their 
abbeys and cathedrals testify : now, even the puri- 
tanism is all gone. London is pagan. He fancie4 



STONEHENGE. 279 

that greater men had lived in England, than any 
of her writers ; and, in fact, about the time when 
those writers appeared, the last of these were al- 
ready gone. 

We left the mound in the twilight, with the de- 
sign to return the next morning, and coming back 
two miles to our inn, we were met by little 
showers, and late as it was, men and women were 
out attempting to protect their spread wind-rows. 
The grass grows rank and dark in the showery 
England. At the inn, there was only milk for one 
cup of tea. When we called for more, the girl 
brought us three drops. My friend was annoyed 
who stood for the credit of an English inn, and 
still more, the next morning, by the dog-cart, sole 
procurable vehicle, in which we were to be sent 
to Wilton. I engaged the local antiquary, Mr. 
Brown, to go with us to Stonehenge, on our way, 
and show us what he knew of the " astronomical " 
and " sacrificial " stones. I stood on the last, and 
he pointed to the upright, or rather, inclined stone, 
called the " astronomical," and bade me notice that 
its top ranged with the sky-line. " Yes." Very 
well. Now, at the summer solstice, the sun rises 
exactly over the top of that stone, and, at the Dru- 
idical temple at Abury, there is also an astronomi* 
cal stone, in the same relative positions. 



280 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

In the silence of tradition, this one relation to 
science becomes an important clue ; but we were 
content to leave the problem, with the rocks. 
Was this the "Giants' Dance" which Merlin 
brought from Killaraus, in Ireland, to be Uther 
Pendragon's monument to the British nobles whom 
Hengist slaughtered here, as Geoffrey of Mon- 
mouth relates ? or was it a Roman work, as Inigo 
Jones explained to King James ; or identical in 
design and style with the East Indian temples of 
the sun ; as Davies in the Celtic Researches main- 
tains ? Of all the writers, Stukeley is the best. 
The heroic antiquary, charmed with the geometric 
perfections of his ruin, connects it with the oldest 
monuments and religion of the world, and with the 
courage of his tribe, does not stick to say, " the Deity 
who made the world by the scheme of Stone- 
henge." He finds that the cursus * on Salisbury Plain 
stretches across the downs, like a line of latitude 
upon the globe, and the meridian line of Stone- 



* Connected "with Stonehenge are an avenue and a cursus. 
The avenue is a narrow road of raised earth, extending 594 
yards in a straight line from the grand entrance, then dividing 
into two branches, which lead, severally, to a row of barrows ; 
and to the cursus, — an artificially formed flat tract of ground. 
This is half a mile northeast from Stonehenge, bounded by 
banks and ditches, 3036 yards long, by 110 broad. 



STONEHENGE. 281 

henge passes exactly through the middle of tins 
cursus. But here is the high point of the theory : 
the Druids had the magnet ; laid their courses by it ,• 
their cardinal points in Stonehenge, Ambresbury, 
and elsewhere, which vary a little from true east 
and west, followed the variations of the compass. 
The Druids were Phoenicians. The name of the 
magnet is lapis Heracleus, and Hercules was the 
god of the Phoenicians. Hercules, in the legend, 
drew his bow at the sun, and the sun-god gave him 
a golden cup, with which he sailed over the ocean. 
"What was this, but a compass-box ? This cup or 
little boat, in which the magnet was made to float 
on water, and so show the north, was probably its 
first form, before it was suspended on a pin. But 
science was an arcanum, and, as Britain was a 
Phoenician secret, so they kept their compass a 
secret, and it was lost with the Tyrian commerce. 
The golden fleece, again, of Jason, was the com- 
pass, — a bit of loadstone, easily supposed to be 
the only one in the world, and therefore naturally 
awakening the cupidity and ambition of the young 
heroes of a maritime nation to join in an expedi- 
tion to obtain possession of this wise stone. Hence 
the fable that the ship Argo was loquacious and 
oracular. There is also some curious coincidence 
in the names. Apollodorus makes Magnes the son 
24* 



282 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

of jEoIus, who married Nais. On hints like these, 
Stukeley builds again the grand colonnade into his- 
toric harmony, and computing backward by the 
known variations of the compass, bravely assigns the 
year 406 before Christ, for the date of the temple. 

For the difficulty of handling and carrying 
stones of this size, the like is done in all cities, 
every day, with no other aid than horse power. I 
chanced to see a year ago men at work on the sub- 
structure of a house in Bowdoin Square, in Bos- 
ton, swinging a block of granite of the size of the 
largest of the Stonehenge columns with an ordinary 
derrick. The men were common masons, with 
paddies to help, nor did they think they were doing 
anything remarkable. I suppose, there were as 
good men a thousand years ago. And we wonder 
how Stonehenge was built and forgotten. After 
spending half an hour on the spot, we set forth 
in our dog-cart over the downs for Wilton, C. 
not suppressing some threats and evil omens on 
the proprietors, for keeping these broad plains a 
wretched sheep-walk, when so many thousands of 
English men were hungry and wanted labor. But 
I heard afterwards that it is not an economy to 
cultivate this land, which only yields one crop on 
being broken up and is then spoiled. 

We came to Wilton and to Wilton Hall, — the 



STONEHENGE. 2<S3 

renowned seat of the Earls of Pembroke, a bouse 
known to Shakspeare and Massinger, the frequent 
home of Sir Philip Sidney where he wrote the 
Arcadia ; where he conversed with Lord Brooke, 
a man of deep thought, and a poet, who caused to 
be engraved on his tombstone, " Here lies Fulke 
Greville Lord Brooke, the friend of Sir Philip 
Sidney." It is now the property of the Earl of 
Pembroke, and the residence of his brother, Sid- 
ney Herbert, Esq., and is esteemed a noble speci- 
men of the English manor-hall. My friend had 
a letter from Mr. Herbert to his housekeeper, and 
the house was shown. The state drawing-room is 
a double cube, 30 feet high, by 30 feet wide, by 
60 feet long : the adjoining room is a single cube, 
of 30 feet every way. Although these apartments 
and the long library were full of good family 
portraits, Vandykes and other ; and though there 
were some good pictures, and a quadrangle cloister 
full of antique and modern statuary, — to which 
C, catalogue in hand, did all too much justice, — 
yet the eye was still drawn to the windows, to a 
magnificent lawn, on which grew the finest cedars 
in England. I had not seen more charming 
grounds. We went out, and walked over the 
estate. We crossed a bridge built by Inigo Jones 
over a stream, of which the gardener did not know 



284 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

the name, ( Qu. Alph ?) watched the deer ; climbed 
to the lonely sculptured summer house, on a hill 
backed by a wood ; came down into the Italian 
garden, and into a French pavilion, garnished with 
French busts ; and so again, to the house, where 
we found a table laid for us with bread, meats, 
peaches, grapes, and wine. 

On leaving Wilton House, we took the coach for 
Salisbury. The Cathedral, which was finished 600 
years ago, has even a spruce and modern air, and 
its spire is the highest in England. I know not 
why, but I had been more struck with one of no 
fame at Coventry, which rises 300 feet from the 
ground, with the lightness of a mullein-plant, and 
not at all implicated with the church. Salisbury 
is now esteemed the culmination of the Gothic art 
in England, as the buttresses are fully unmasked, 
and honestly detailed from the sides of the pile. 
The interior of the Cathedral is obstructed by the 
organ in the middle, acting like a screen. I know 
not why in real architecture the hunger of the eye 
for length of line is so rarely gratified. The rule 
of art is that a colonnade is more beautiful the 
longer it is, and that ad infinitum. And the nave 
of a church is seldom so long that it need be di- 
vided by a screen. 

We loitered in the church, outside the choir 



STONEHENGE. 285 

whilst service was said. Whilst we listened to the 
organ, my friend remarked, the music is good, and 
yet not quite religious, but somewhat as if a monk 
were panting to some fine Queen of Heaven. C. 
was unwilling, and we did not ask to have the 
choir shown us, but returned to our inn, after 
seeing another old church of the place. We 
passed in the train Clarendon Park, but could see 
little but the edge of a wood, though C. had wished 
to pay closer attention to the birthplace of the 
Decrees of Clarendon. At Bishopstoke we stopped, 
and found Mr. H., who received us in his carriage, 
and took us to his house at Bishops Waltham. 

On Sunday, we had much discourse on a very rainy 
day. My friends asked, whether there were any 
Americans ? — any with an American idea, — any 
theory of the right future of that country ? Thus 
challenged, I bethought myself neither of caucuses 
nor congress, neither of presidents nor of cabinet- 
ministers, nor of such as would make of America 
another Europe. I thought only of the simplest 
and purest minds ; I said, ' Certainly yes ; — but 
those who hold it are fanatics of a dream which I 
should hardly care to relate to your English ears, 
to which it might be only ridiculous, — and yet it 
is the only true.' So I opened the dogma of no- 
government and non-resistance, and anticipated the 



286 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

objections and the fun, and procured a kind of 
hearing for it. I said, it is true that I have nevei 
seen in any country a man of sufficient valor to 
stand for this truth, and yet it is plain to me, that 
no less valor than this can command my respect. 
I can easily see the bankruptcy of the vulgar 
musket-worship, — though great men be musket- 
worshippers ; — and 'tis certain, as God liveth, the 
gun that does not need another gun, the law of 
love and justice alone, can effect a clean revolution. 
I fancied that one or two of my anecdotes made 
some impression on C, and I insisted, that the 
manifest absurdity of the view to English feasibil- 
ity could make no difference to a gentleman ; that 
as to our secure tenure of our mutton-chop and 
spinage in London or in Boston, the soul might 
quote Talleyrand, " Monsieur, je n'en vois pas la 
necessite" * As I had thus taken in the conversa- 
tion the saint's part, when dinner was announced, 
C. refused to go out before me, — " he was alto- 
gether too wicked." I planted my back against 
the wall, and our host wittily rescued us from the 
dilemma, by saying, he was the wickedest, and 
would walk out first, then C. followed, and I went 
last. 

On the way to Winchester, whither our host 

* " Mais, Monseigneur, ilfaut que fexiste" 



STONEHENGE. 287 

accompanied us in the afternoon, my friends asked 
many questions respecting American landscape, 
forests, houses, — my house, for example. It is 
not easy to answer these queries well. There I 
thought, in America, lies nature sleeping, over- 
growing, almost conscious, too much by half for 
man in the picture, and so giving a certain tristesse, 
like the rank vegetation of swamps and forests 
seen at night, steeped in dews and rains, which it 
loves ; and on it man seems not able to make much 
impression. There, in that great sloven continent, 
in high Alleghany pastures, in the sea-wide, sky- 
skirted prairie, still sleeps and murmurs and hides 
the great mother, long since driven away from the 
trim hedge-rows and over-cultivated garden of 
England. And, in England, I am quite too sensi- 
ble of this. Every one is on his good behavior, 
and must be dressed for dinner at six. So I put 
off my friends with very inadequate details, as best 
I could. 

Just before entering Winchester, we stopped at 
the Church of Saint Cross, and, after looking 
through the quaint antiquity, we demanded a piece 
of bread and a draught of beer, which the founder, 
Henry de Blois, in 1136, commanded should be 
given to every one who should ask it at the gate. 
We had both, from the old couple who take cars 



288 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

af the church. Some twenty people, every day, 
they said, make the same demand. This hospital- 
ity of seven hundred years' standing did not hin- 
der C. from pronouncing a malediction on the 
priest who receives £2000 a year, that were meant 
for the poor, and spends a pittance on this small 
beer and crumbs. 

In the Cathedral, I was gratified, at least by the 
ample dimensions. The length of line exceeds 
that of any other English church ; being 556 feet 
by 250 in breadth of transept. I think I prefer 
this church to all I have seen, except Westminster 
and York. Here was Canute buried, and here 
Alfred the Great was crowned and buried, and 
here the Saxon kings : and, later, in his own 
church, William of Wykeham. It is very old: 
part of the crypt into which we went down and 
saw the Saxon and Norman arches of the old 
church on which the present stands, was built 
fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. Sharon 
Turner says, " Alfred was buried at Winchester, in 
the Abbey he had founded there, but his remains 
were removed .by Henry I. to the new Abbey in 
the meadows at Hyde, on the northern quarter of 
the city, and laid under the high altar. The build- 
ing was destroyed at the Reformation, and what 
is left of Alfred's body now lies covered by mod- 



STONEHENGE. 289 

ern buildings, or buried in the ruins of the 
old."* William of Wykeham's shrine tomb was 
unlocked for us, and C. took hold of the recumbent 
statue's marble hands, and patted them affection- 
ately, for he rightly values the brave man who 
built Windsor, and this Cathedral, and the School 
here, and New College at Oxford. But it was 
growing late in the afternoon. Slowly we left the 
old house, and parting with our host, we took the 
train for London. 



History of the Anglo-Saxons, I. 599. 

25 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PERSONAL. 

In these comments on an old journey now re- 
vised after seven busy years have much changed 
men and things in England, I have abstained from 
reference to persons, except in the last chapter, 
and in one or two cases where the fame of the 
parties seemed to have given the public a property 
in all that concerned them. I must further allow 
myself a few notices, if only as an acknowledg- 
ment of debts that cannot be paid. My journeys 
were cheered by so much kindness from new 
friends, that my impression of the island is bright 
with agreeable memories both of public societies 
and of households : and, what is nowhere better 
found than in England, a cultivated person fitly 
surrounded by a happy home, u with honor, love, 
obedience, troops of friends," is of all institutions 
the best. At the landing in Liverpool, I found 
my Manchester correspondent awaiting me, a gen 
tleman whose kind reception was followed by a 

(290) 



PERSONAL. 291 

train of friendly and effective attentions which 
never rested whilst I remained in the country. A 
man of sense and of letters, the editor of a power- 
ful local journal, he added to solid virtues an infi- 
nite sweetness and bonhommie. There seemed a 
pool of honey about his heart which lubricated 
all his speech and action with fine jets of mead. 
An equal good fortune attended many later acci- 
dents of my journey, until the sincerity of English 
kindness ceased to surprise. My visit fell in the 
fortunate days when Mr. Bancroft was the Ameri- 
can Minister in London, and at his house, or 
through his good offices, I had easy access to ex- 
cellent persons and to privileged places. At the 
house of Mr. Carlyle, I met persons eminent in 
society and in letters. The privileges of the 
Athenaeum and of the Reform Clubs were hospi- 
tably opened to me, and I found much advantage 
in the circles of the "Geologic," the "Antiqua- 
rian," and the " Royal Societies." Every day in 
London gave me new opportunities of meeting 
men and women who give splendor to society. I 
saw Rogers, Hallam, Macaulay, Milnes, Milman, 
Barry Cornwall, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, 
Leigh Hunt, DTsraeli, Helps, Wilkinson, Bailey 
Kenyon, and Forster : the younger poets, Clough, 
Arnold, and Patmore ; and, among the men of 



292 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

science, Robert Brown, Owen, Sedgwick, Faraday, 
Buckland, Lyell, De la Beche, Hooker, Carpenter, 
Babbage, and Edward Forbes. It was my privi- 
lege also to converse with Miss Baillie, with Lady 
Morgan, with Mrs. Jameson, and Mrs. Somerville. 
A finer hospitality made many private houses not 
less known and dear. It is not in distinguished 
circles that wisdom and elevated characters are 
usually found, or, if found, not confined thereto ; 
and my recollections of the best hours go back to 
private conversations in different parts of the king- 
dom, with persons little known. Nor am I insen- 
sible to the courtesy which frankly opened to me 
some noble mansions, if I do not adorn my page 
with their names. Among the privileges of Lon- 
don, I recall with pleasure two or three signal 
days, one at Kew, where Sir William Hooker 
showed me all the riches of the vast botanic gar- 
den ; one at the Museum, where Sir Charles Fel- 
low es explained in detail the history of his Ionie 
trophy-monument ; and still another, on which 
Mr. Owen accompanied my countryman Mr. H. 
and myself through the Hunterian Museum. 

The like frank hospitality, bent on real service, 
I found among the great and the humble, wherever 
I went ; in Birmingham, in Oxford, in Leicester, 
id Nottingham, in Sheffield, in Manchester, in 



PERSONAL. 293 

Liverpool. At Edinburgh, through the kindness 
of Dr. Samuel Brown, I made the acquaintance of 
De Quincey, of Lord Jeffrey, of Wilson, of Mrs. 
Crowe, of the Messrs. Chambers, and of a man of 
high character and genius, the short lived painter, 
David Scott. 

At Ambleside in March, 1848, I was for a 
couple of days the guest of Miss Martineau, then 
newly returned from her Egyptian tour. On Sun- 
day afternoon, I accompanied her to Rydal Mount. 
And as I have recorded a visit to Wordsworth, 
many years before, I must not forget this second 
interview. We found Mr. Wordsworth asleep on 
the sofa. He was at first silent and indisposed, as 
an old man suddenly waked, before he had ended 
his nap ; but soon became full of talk on the French 
news. He was nationally bitter on the French : 
bitter on Scotchmen, too. No Scotchman, he said, 
can write English. He detailed the two models, on 
one or the other of which all the sentences of the 
historian Robertson are framed. Nor could Jef- 
frey, nor the Edinburgh Reviewers write English, 
nor can * * *, who is a pest to the English tongue. 
Incidentally he added, Gibbon cannot write Eng- 
lish. The Edinburgh Review wrote what would 
tell and what would sell. It had however changed 
the tone of its literary criticism from the time when 
25* 



294 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

a certain letter was written to the editor by Coleridge, 
Mrs. W. had the Editor's answer in her possession. 
Tennyson he thinks a right poetic genius, though 
with some affectation. He had thought an elder 
brother of Tennyson at first the better poet, but 
must now reckon Alfred the true one. ... In 
speaking of I know not what style, he said, " to be 
sure, it was the manner, but then you know the 
matter always comes out of the manner." . . 
He thought Rio Janeiro the best place in the world 
for a great capital city. . . . We talked of 
English national character. I told him, it was not 
creditable that no one in all the country knew any- 
thing of Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, whilst in 
every American library his translations are found. 
I said, if Plato's Republic were published in 
England as a new book to-day, do you think it 
would find any readers ? — he confessed, it would 
not : " and yet," he added after a pause, with that 
complacency which never deserts a true-born Eng- 
lishman, " and yet we have embodied it all." 

His opinions of French, English, Irish, and 
Scotch, seemed rashly formulized from little anec- 
dotes of what had befallen himself and members 
of his family, in a diligence or stage-coach. His 
face sometimes lighted up, but his conversation 
was not marked by special force or elevation. Yet 



PERSONAL. 295 

perhaps it is a high compliment to the cultivation 
of the English generally, when we find such a 
man not distinguished. He had a healthy look, 
with a weather-beaten face, his face corrugated, 
especially the large nose. 

Miss Martineau, who lived near him, praised 
him to me not for his poetry, but for thrift and 
economy ; for having afforded to his country- 
neighbors an example of a modest household, 
where comfort and culture were secured without 
any display. She said, that, in his early house- 
keeping at the cottage where he first lived, he was 
accustomed to offer his friends bread and plainest 
fare : if they wanted any thing more, they must 
pay him for their board. It was the rule of the 
house. I replied, that it evinced English pluck 
more than any anecdote I knew. A gentleman in 
the neighborhood told the story of Walter Scott's 
staying once for a week with Wordsworth, and 
slipping out every day under pretence of a walk, 
to the Swan Inn, for a cold cut and porter ; and 
one day passing with Wordsworth the inn, he was 
betrayed by the landlord's asking him if he had 
come for his porter. Of course, this trait would 
have another look in London, and there you will 
hear from different literary men, that Wordsworth 
had no personal friend, that he was not amiable, 



296 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

that he was parsimonious, &c. Landor, always 
generous, says, that he never praised any body 
A gentleman in London showed me a watch 
that once belonged to Milton, whose initials are 
engraved on its face. He said, he once showed 
this to Wordsworth, who took it in one hand, then 
drew out his own watch, and held it up with the 
other, before the company, but no one making the 
expected remark, he put back his own in silence. 
I do not attach much importance to the dispar- 
agement of Wordsworth among London scholars. 
Who reads him well will know, that in following 
the strong bent of his genius, he was careless of 
the many, careless also of the few, self-assured 
that he should " create the taste by which he is to 
be enjoyed." He lived long enough to witness 
the revolution he had wrought, and " to see what 
he foresaw." There are torpid places in his mind, 
there is something hard and sterile in his poetry, 
want of grace and variety, want of due catholicity 
and cosmopolitan scope : he had conformities to 
English politics and traditions ; he had egotistic 
puerilities in the choice and treatment of his sub- 
jects ; but let us say of him, that, alone in his time 
he treated the human mind well, and with an ab- 
solute trust. His adherence to his poetic creed 



PERSONAL. 297 

rested on real inspirations. The Ode on Immor- 
tality is the high-water-mark which the intellect 
has reached in this age. New means were em- 
ployed, and new realms added to the empire of 
the muse, by his courage 



CHAPTEK XVIII. 

RESULT. 

England is the best of actual nations. It is no 
ideal framework, it is an old pile built in different 
ages, with repairs, additions, and makeshifts ; but 
you see the poor best you have got. London is 
the epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day. 
Broad-fronted broad-bottomed Teutons, they stand 
in solid phalanx foursquare to the points of com- 
pass ; they constitute the modern world, they have 
earned their vantage-ground, and held it through 
ages of adverse possession. They are well marked 
and differing from other leading races. England 
is tender-hearted. Rome was not. England is 
not so public in its bias ; private life is its place of 
honor. Truth in private life, untruth in public, 
marks these home-loving men. Their political 
conduct is not decided by general views, but by 
internal intrigues and personal and family interest. 
They cannot readily see beyond England. The 
history of Rome and Greece, when written by 

(298) 



RESULT. 299 

their scholars, degenerates into English party pamph- 
lets. They cannot see beyond England, nor in 
England can they transcend the interests of the 
governing classes. " English principles " mean a 
primary regard to the interests of property. Eng- 
land, Scotland, and Ireland combine to check the 
colonies. England and Scotland combine to 
check Irish manufactures and trade. England 
rallies at home to check Scotland. In England, 
the strong classes check the weaker. In the home 
population of near thirty millions, there are but 
one million voters. The Church punishes dissent, 
punishes education. Down to a late day, mar- 
riages performed by dissenters were illegal. A 
bitter class-legislation gives power to those who 
are rich enough to buy a law. The game-laws 
are a proverb of oppression. Pauperism incrusts 
and clogs the state, and in hard times becomes 
hideous. In bad seasons, the porridge was diluted. 
Multitudes lived miserably by shell-fish and sea- 
ware. In cities, the children are trained to beg, 
until they shall be old enough to rob. Men and 
women were convicted of poisoning scores of chil- 
dren for burial-fees. In Irish districts, men dete- 
riorated in size and shape, the nose sunk, the 
gums were exposed, with diminished brain and 
brutal form. During the Australian emigration, 



300 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

multitudes were rejected by the commissioners as 
being too emaciated for useful colonists. During 
the Russian war, few of those that offered as recruits 
were found up to the medical standard, though it 
had been reduced. 

The foreign policy of England, though ambi- 
tious and lavish of money, has not often been gen- 
erous or just. It has a principal regard to the in- 
terest of trade, checked however by the aristocratic 
bias of the ambassador, which usually puts him in 
sympathy with the continental Courts. It sanc- 
tioned the partition of Poland, it betrayed Genoa, 
Sicily, Parga, Greece, Turkey, Rome, and Hun- 
gary. 

Some public regards they have. They have 
abolished slavery in the West Indies, and put an 
end to human sacrifices in the East. At home 
they have a certain statute hospitality. England 
keeps open doors, as a trading country must, to all 
nations. It is one of their fixed ideas, and wrath- 
fully supported by their laws in unbroken sequence 
for a thousand years. In Magna Charta it was 
ordained, that all " merchants shall have safe and 
secure conduct to go out and come into England, 
and to stay there, and to pass as well by land as 
by water, to buy and sell by the ancient allowed 
customs, without any evil toll^ except in time of 



RESULT. 301 

war, or when they shall be of any nation at war 
with us." It is a statute and obliged hospitality, 
and peremptorily maintained. But this shop-rule 
had one magnificent effect. It extends its cold 
unalterable courtesy to political exiles of every 
opinion, and is a fact which might give additional 
light to that portion of the planet seen from the 
farthest star. But this perfunctory hospitality puts 
no sweetness into their unaccommodating manners, 
no check on that puissant nationality which makes 
their existence incompatible with all that is not 
English. 

What we must say about a nation is a superfi- 
cial dealing with symptoms. We cannot go deep 
enough into the biography of the spirit who never 
throws himself entire into one hero, but delegates 
his energy in parts or spasms to vicious and defec- 
tive individuals. But the wealth of the source is 
seen in the plenitude of English nature. What 
variety of power and talent ; what facility and plen- 
teousness of knighthood, lordship, ladyship, roy- 
alty, loyalty ; what a proud chivalry is indicated in 
" Collins's Feerage," through eight hundred years ! 
What dignity resting on what reality and stoutness ! 
What courage in war, what sinew in labor, what 
cunning workmen, what inventors and engineers, 
what seamen and pilots, what clerks and scholars ! 
26 



302 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

No one man and no few men can represent them. 
It is a people of myriad personalities. Their many- 
headedness is owing to the advantageous position 
of the middle class, who are always the source of 
letters and science. Hence the vast plenty of their 
aesthetic production. As they are many-headed, 
so they are many-nationed : their colonization an- 
nexes archipelagoes and continents, and their 
speech seems destined to be the universal language 
of men. I have noted the reserve of power in 
the English temperament. In the island, they 
never let out all the length of all the reins, there 
is no Berserkir rage, no abandonment or ecstasy of 
will or intellect, like that of the Arabs in the time 
of Mahomet, or like that which intoxicated France 
in 1789. But who would see the uncoiling of 
that tremendous spring, the explosion of their 
well-husbanded forces, must follow the swarms 
which pouring now for two hundred years from 
the British islands, have sailed, and rode, and 
traded, and planted, through all climates, mainly 
following the belt of empire, the temperate zones, 
carrying the Saxon seed, with its instinct for lib- 
erty and law, for arts and for thought, — acquiring 
under some skies a more electric energy than the 
native air allows, — to the conquest of the globe. 
Their colonial policy, obeying the necessities of 



RESULT. 303 

a vast empire, has become liberal. Canada and 
Australia have been contented with substantial 
independence. They are expiating the wrongs of 
India, by benefits ; first, in works for the irriga- 
tion of the peninsula, and roads and telegraphs ; 
and secondly, in the instruction of the people, to 
qualify them for self-government, when the British 
power shall be finally called home. 

Their mind is in a state of arrested devel- 
opment, — a divine cripple like Vulcan ; a blind 
savant like Huber and Sanderson. They do not 
occupy themselves on matters of general and last- 
ing import, but on a corporeal civilization, on 
goods that perish in the using. But they read 
with good intent, and what they learn they incar- 
nate. The English mind turns every abstraction 
it can receive into a portable utensil, or a working 
institution. Such is their tenacity, and such their 
practical turn, that they hold all they gain. Hence 
we say, that only the English race can be trusted 
with freedom, — freedom which is double-edged 
and dangerous to any but the wise and robust. 
The English designate the kingdoms emulous of 
free institutions, as the sentimental nations. Their 
culture is not an outside varnish, but is thorough 
and secular in families and the race. They are 
oppressive with their temperament, and all the 
more that they are refined. I have sometimes 



804 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

^een them walk with my countrymen when I was 
forced to allow them every advantage, and their 
companions seemed bags of bones. 

There is cramp limitation in their habit of 
thought, sleepy routine, and a tortoise's instinct 
to hold hard to the ground with his claws, lest he 
should be thrown on his back. There is a drag of 
inertia which resists reform in every shape ; — law- 
reform, army-reform, extension of suffrage, Jewish 
franchise, Catholic emancipation, — the abolition 
of slavery, of impressment, penal code, and en- 
tails. They praise this drag, under the for- 
mula, that it is the excellence of the British 
constitution, that no law can anticipate the public 
opinion. These poor tortoises must hold hard, for 
they feel no wings sprouting at their shoulders. 
Yet somewhat divine warms at their heart, and 
waits a happier hour. It hides in their sturdy 
will. " Will," said the old philosophy, "is the 
measure of power," and personality is the token 
of this race. Quid vult valde vult. What they 
do they do with a will. You cannot account for 
their success by their Christianity, commerce, char- 
ter, common law, Parliament, or letters, but by 
the contumacious sharptongued energy of English 
naturel, with a poise impossible to disturb, which 
makes all these its instruments. They are slow 
and reticent, and are like a dull good horse 



RESULT. 305 

which lets every nag pass him, but with whip and 
spur will run down every racer in the field. They 
are right in their feeling, though wrong in their 
speculation. 

The feudal system survives in the steep in- 
equality of property and privilege, in the limited 
franchise, in the social barriers which confine pa- 
tronage and promotion to a caste, and still more in 
the submissive ideas pervading these people. The 
fagging of the schools is repeated in the social 
classes. An Englishman shows no mercy to those 
below him in the social scale, as he looks for none 
from those above him : any forbearance from his 
superiors surprises him, and they suffer in his good 
opinion. But the feudal system can be seen with 
less pain on large historical grounds. It was 
pleaded in mitigation of the rotten borough, that 
it worked well, that substantial justice was done. 
Fox, Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce, Sheridan, 
Romilly, or whatever national man, were by this 
means sent to Parliament, when their return by 
large constituencies would have been doubtful. So 
now we say, that the right measures of England are 
the men it bred ; that it has yielded more able men 
in five hundred years than any other nation ; and, 
though we must not play Providence, and balance 
the chances of producing ten great men against the 
26* 



306 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

comfort of ten thousand mean men, yet retrospec- 
tively we may strike the balance, and prefer one 
Alfred, one Shakspeare, one Milton, one Sidney, 
one Raleigh, one Wellington, to a million foolish 
democrats. 

The American system is more democratic, more 
humane ; yet the American people do not yield 
better or more able men, or more inventions or 
books or benefits, than the English. Congress is 
not wiser or better than Parliament. France has 
abolished its suffocating old regime, but is not re- 
cently marked by any more wisdom or virtue. 

The power of performance has not been ex- 
ceeded, — the creation of value. The English 
have given importance to individuals, a principal 
end and fruit of every society. Every man is 
allowed and encouraged to be what he is, and is 
guarded in the indulgence of his whim. " Magna 
Charta," said Rushworth, " is such a fellow that he 
will have no sovereign." By this general activity, 
and by this sacredness of individuals, they have in 
seven hundred years evolved the principles of free- 
dom. It is the land of patriots, martyrs, sages, and 
bards, and if the ocean out of which it emerged 
should wash it away, it will be remembered as an 
island famous for immortal laws, for the announce- 
ments of original right which make the stone 
tables of liberty. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 

A few days after my arrival at Manchester, in No 
vember, 1847, the Manchester Athenaeum gave its 
annual Banquet in the Free-Trade Hall. With other 
guests, I was invited to be present, and to address 
the company. In looking over recently a newspa- 
per-report of my remarks, I incline to reprint it, 
as fitly expressing the feeling with which I en- 
tered England, and which agrees well enough with 
the more deliberate results of better acquaintance 
recorded in the foregoing pages. Sir Archibald 
Alison, the historian, presided, and opened the 
meeting with a speech. He was followed by Mr. 
Cobden, Lord Brackley, and others, among whom 
was Mr. Cruikshank, one of the contributors to 
" Punch." Mr. Dickens's letter of apology for 
his absence was read. Mr. Jerrold, who had been 
announced, did not appear. On being introduced 
to the meeting I said, — 

(307) 



308 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : It is pleasant 
to me to meet this great and brilliant company, 
and doubly pleasant to see the faces of so many 
distinguished persons on this platform. But I 
have known all these persons already. When I 
was at home, they were as near to me as they are 
to you. The arguments of the League and its 
leader are known to all the friends of free trade. 
The gayeties and genius, the political, the social, the 
parietal wit of " Punch " go duly every fortnight 
to every boy and girl in Boston and New York. 
Sir, when I came to sea, I found the " History of 
Europe " * on the ship's cabin table, the property 
of the captain ; — a sort of programme or play -bill 
to tell the seafaring New Englander what he shall 
find on his landing here. And as for Dombey, sir, 
there is no land where paper exists to print on, 
where it is not found; no man who can read, that 
does not read it, and, if he cannot, he finds some 
pair of eyes that can, and hears it. 

But ..: ese things are not for me to say; these 
compliments, though true, would better come from 
one who felt and understood these merits more. I 
am not here to exchange civilities with you, but 
rather to speak of that which I am sure interests 

* By Sir A. Alison. 



SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 30$ 

these gentlemen more than their own praises ; of 
that which is good in holidays and working-days 
the same in one century and in another century 
That which lures a solitary American in the woods 
with the wish to see England, is the moral pecu- 
liarity of the Saxon race, — its commanding sense 
of right and wrong, — the love and devotion to 
that, — this is the imperial trait, which arms them 
with the sceptre of the globe. It is this which 
lies at the foundation of that aristocratic character, 
which certainly wanders into strange vagaries, so 
that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if 
it should lose this, would find itself paralyzed ; 
and in trade, and in the mechanic's shop, gives 
that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and 
solidity of work, which is a national characteristic. 
This conscience is one element, and the other is 
that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship, that 
homage of man to man, running through all 
classes, — the electing of worthy persons to a cer- 
tain fraternity, to acts of kindness and warm and 
staunch support, from year to year, from youth to 
age, — which is alike lovely and honorable to those 
who render and those who receive it ; — which 
stands in strong contrast with the superficial at- 
tachments of other races, their excessive courtesy 
and short-lived connection. 



310 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, 
but holiday though it be, I have not the smallest in- 
terest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and 
not pretended joys ; and I think it just, in this 
time of gloom and commercial disaster, of afflic- 
tion and beggary in these districts, that, on these 
very accounts I speak of, you should not fail to 
keep your literary anniversary. I seem to hear 
you say, that, for all that is come and gone yet, we 
will not reduce by one chaplet or one oak leaf the 
braveries of our annual feast. For I must tell 
you, I was given to understand in my childhood, 
that the British island from which my forefathers 
came, was no lotus-garden, no paradise of serene 
sky and roses and music and merriment all the 
year round, no, but a cold foggy mournful coun- 
try, where nothing grew well in the open air, but 
men and virtuous women, and these of a 
fibre and endurance ; that their best 
i were slowly revealed ; their virtues did not 
jut until they quarrelled : they did not 
twelve the first time ; good lovers, good 
haters, and you could know little about them till 
you had seen them long, and little good of them 
till you had seen them in action ; that in prosperity 
they were moody and dumpish, but in adversity 
they were grand. Is it not true, sir, that the wise 



SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 311 

ancients did not praise the ship parting with flying 
colors from the port, but only that brave sailer 
which came back with torn sheets and battered 
sides, stript of her banners, but having ridden out 
the storm ? And so, gentlemen, I feel in regard 
to this aged England, with the possessions, honors 
and trophies, and also with the infirmities of a 
thousand years gathering around her, irretrievably 
committed as she now is to many old customs which 
cannot be suddenly changed ; pressed upon by the 
transitions of trade, and new and all incalculable 
modes, fabrics, arts, machines, and competing pop- 
ulations, — I see her not dispirited, not weak, but 
well remembering that she has seen dark days be- 
fore ; — indeed with a kind of instinct that she 
sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in 
storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor 
and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old 
age, not decrepit, but young, and still daring to 
believe in her power of endurance and expansion. 
Seeing this, I say, All hail! mother of nations, 
mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the 
time ; still wise to entertain and swift to execute 
the policy which the mind and heart of mankind 
requires in the present hour, and thus only hospi- 
table to the foreigner, and truly a home to the 
thoughtful and generous who are born in the soil. 



312 ENGLISH TRAITS. 

So be it ! so let it be ! If it be not so, if the cour« 
age of England goes with the chances of a com- 
mercial crisis, I will go back to the capes of Mas- 
sachusetts, and my own Indian stream, and say to 
my countrymen, the old race are all gone, and the 
elasticity and hope of mankind must henceforth 
remain on the Alleghany ranges, or nowhere. 






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